Ireland’s Hermitage Medical Clinic Enables Critical Physician and Patient Services with Enterasys Secure Network

Enterasys Networks Inc., the Secure Networks Company™, announced today that the Dublin, Ireland-based Hermitage Medical Clinic has deployed an Enterasys Secure Network infrastructure to provide secure network connectivity for hundreds of health care professionals and staff at its new state-of-the-art hospital. The network also enables the hospital to offer secure network access to patients and other guest users.

The Hermitage Medical Clinic’s new 1,100-node network includes Enterasys Matrix™ N-Series flow switches at the core and 48-port Enterasys SecureStack™ C-Series secure edge switches with Gigabit ports at the distribution layer. According to Teresa Bowe, network manager at the Hermitage Medical Clinic, leveraging the security features embedded in Enterasys solutions enables the hospital to comply with healthcare security regulations.

“Ensuring infrastructure security – and particularly controlling access to confidential patient data – is critical,” she said. “The security inherent in Enterasys switches is extremely important to us, and we’re already realizing the benefit, especially of the multi-user authentication offered by the Matrix N-Series. In a facility like ours, where patients, visitors, consultants and vendors can access the network as guest users, we control network access by authenticating authorized users and devices. It is a major advantage since those capabilities come built-in with the Enterasys switches, which saves us a tremendous amount of time while ensuring compliance.”

The Hermitage Medical Clinic, which is just the fourth private hospital in the Republic of Ireland, depends on its Secure Network to support a number of mission-critical technologies and applications, including IP telephony and wireless voice solutions from Siemens, and a health care information application, which supports the hospital’s administrative, financial, and clinical systems.

“Interoperability and adherence to open standards is very important to us, and Enterasys solutions have integrated smoothly into our multi-vendor, multi-technology infrastructure,” said Michael Gogola, chief information officer at the Hermitage Medical Clinic. “In a healthcare environment, the ability to communicate instantly is vital, and because cell phones don’t operate well within our facility, it is especially important that our network interoperate with our VoIP and wireless voice solutions.”

The level of service the Hermitage Medical Clinic has received from Enterasys and partner Siemens has also been valuable. “Our Enterasys network is literally transparent because we receive exactly the levels of security, reliability and performance we expect,” Gogola added. “One element that has been less expected, but is really appreciated, is the level of service we’ve received. I had an opportunity to meet Enterasys CEO Mike Fabiaschi, and his business card actually says, ‘There is nothing more important than our customers.’ That message really resonated with me, and in my interactions with the company since that time, I’ve seen that Enterasys really walks the talk.”

In the future, the Hermitage Medical Clinic will expand its infrastructure monitoring capabilities by deploying Enterasys’ NetSight® Management Suite for visibility and control of the entire infrastructure, including equipment from other vendors.

About Enterasys Networks
Enterasys Networks—the Secure Networks Company—is owned by a private investor group led by The Gores Group, LLC and Tennenbaum Capital Partners, LLC. Enterasys’ unique Secure Networks solutions secure any network from any vendor and ensure the integrity and performance of IT services and the business users that rely on them. Thousands of leading companies, government agencies and educational institutions in more than 70 countries rely on Secure Networks solutions to maintain business continuity and protect vital information. The company’s culture is centered on the principle “There is nothing more important than our customers.” Delivering on that commitment, Secure Networks provides granular, policy-based command and control of individual user, application, device, port and flow performance, and security. Enterasys’ architectural approach to network security offers a long technology lifecycle and significant operational and business benefits, while reducing total cost of ownership. Information about Enterasys’ award-winning policy-enabled switches, routers, wireless products, security software, and services is available at www.enterasys.com.