Manipal Hospitals Revamps Network Security Infra, Enables BYOD With Fortinet

Fortinet, the high-performance network security solutions provider, has announced that Manipal Hospitals has deployed its FortiGate network security platform along with its FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer centralised security management and reporting appliances to help secure its network and enable application access over the Internet and through mobile devices. The solutions also help Manipal Hospitals meet compliance requirements for data security and access control. Manipal Hospitals chose Fortinet’s solutions for their high performance, breadth of security functionality and low total cost of ownership.

Manipal Health Enterprises, a part of the Manipal Education & Medical Group, is a leading quality healthcare provider in India. Operating under the brand name “Manipal Hospitals”, it is the third largest healthcare group in India, with a network of 15 hospitals and over 5,000 beds in 11 locations. The hospitals, which cover all levels of delivery from primary to quaternary care, has over 2,000 doctors and 6,000 nurses, paramedics and support staff and treats 2 million patients annually.

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The hospital group was looking to upgrade its IT infrastructure hosted at their headquarters in Bangalore. The previous security setup was fragmented and did not have a structured framework to mitigate current Internet threats.

Manipal Hospitals wanted to deploy a broad, high performance real-time threat protection solution to safeguard patient information, secure Internet access and meet National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) compliance requirements related to information security. The group was thus looking at enabling a broad range of security features including firewall, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), antivirus, antispam, antispyware, application control, VPN, Web filtering, Web application security, vulnerability management and compliance management. In addition, to keep running costs low, the healthcare group wanted a solution with unlimited user licenses. And, as the hospital wanted its doctors to have access to patient records − and Finance, HR and Marketing staff to have access to ERP and other applications − while on the move, the solution chosen needed to effectively support a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) environment.

Nandkishore Dhomne, CIO, Manipal Health Enterprises, Manipal Group, said, “We needed an enterprise-class multi-layered information security solution well suited to group hospitals, which had to be highly scalable to keep up with our growth and also offer secure remote access to hospital network users accessing sensitive business applications and data. With Fortinet, we found an end-to-end solution that secures the network with integrated authentication and centralised management without any compromise.”

With the implementation of the FortiGate-800C, FortiGate-600C and FortiGate-200B platforms, Manipal Hospitals has addressed all of its initial security requirements and reduced the complexity of its network security by reducing the number of deployed devices. FortiGate’s ability to define and enforce security policies based on the identity of users and the types of devices they use also enabled BYOD to be safely supported within Manipal Hospitals. The FortiManager-200D centralises the management and updates of the FortiGate devices, helps detect security violations and test firewall rules. The FortiAnalyzer-400C performs network analysis and reports on network anomalies.

Manipal Hospitals is now able to provide secure access to business applications such as ERP, Hospital Information System (HIS), Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) and tele-radiology to all of its users across locations. Also, all NABH IT compliance requirements are being met and managed more effectively.

Manipal Hospitals’ solution was deployed by Bangalore-based 22by7 Solutions. Venkat Murthy, prime mover of 22by7 Solutions, said: “We have been deploying Fortinet’s widely trusted solutions for a long time. The implementation went very smoothly. The well-defined scope of work, professional execution and strong support from the customer allowed all deadlines to be met without incident.”

Vishak Raman, Fortinet’s Senior Regional Director for India & SAARC, said, “We keep innovating to give organisations the power to secure and control their IT infrastructure while supporting business functions, processes and new trends such as BYOD. With our solutions, Manipal Hospitals is able to achieve the level of security required in a sensitive environment such as healthcare, without sacrificing performance or losing visibility on what’s happening on their network.”