eTrust Antivirus Protects More Than 2,500 Systems

WellSpan Health (WellSpan), located in York, PA, is a community-based, not-for-profit organization offering healthcare services that include cardiovascular, behavioral health and cancer treatments. More than 8,000 physicians, employees and volunteers work among the hospitals, retail pharmacy sites, and primary and specialty care offices that make up WellSpan. The retail pharmacy sites fill more than 370,000 prescriptions a year, and the primary and specialty care offices account for more than 300,000 visitors a week.

	In our industry, we simply cannot tolerate any downtime, so it is crucial to keep viruses from infiltrating our organization.
		John Coleman, Manager of Technical Services WellSpan Health

The elaborate network of Windows-based servers and PCs are vital to daily operations. “We have about 150 Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers, as well as an Exchange server managed in our data center. Plus, we have 2,500 to 3,000 desktops across the county that all tie back into the same data center,” said John Coleman, Manager of Technical Services for WellSpan.

The Challenge: Protecting a Large Healthcare Organization’s Computers From Virus Attacks
As a healthcare organization, WellSpan adopts zero tolerance for virus infiltration. “We easily see 50 to 100 virus attempts through email and the Exchange server on a daily basis,” said Coleman. “In our industry, we simply cannot tolerate any downtime, so it is crucial to keep viruses from infiltrating our organization.” One of the biggest challenges WellSpan faced with previous antivirus solutions was keeping the virus definitions, or signature files, up to date. When WellSpan had fewer machines to manage with less exposure to the Internet, it was only necessary to update signature files once a week. However, as the number of computers on its network grew from hundreds to thousands, virus updates had to be kept as current as possible.

 

“One of the biggest challenges we faced with our former antivirus product was that when signature files came down to the client computers, the computers had to be rebooted for the new signatures to take effect. However, our end users would frequently neglect to reboot their computers, leaving them vulnerable to new viruses,” explained Coleman. “To protect these systems from the threat of virus attack, we chose eTrust Antivirus from Computer Associates International, Inc.(CA).”

 

The Solution: eTrust Antivirus Automatically Distributes Virus Signature Updates
Using eTrust Antivirus, client machines have the latest signature files to protect their systems against viruses. The automatic updates eliminate a daily end-user task, freeing up time for other priorities.

 

Another feature of eTrust Antivirus that has improved and simplified virus protection for WellSpan is easily configurable policies. “With our previous solution, you had to set a policy up when you installed the product—with no choice in the matter,” said Coleman. “We had very little ability to go back and make changes once the product was installed. eTrust Antivirus manages policies from a central server. If we want to change something about a policy, such as how often it scans, we make changes at the management console and it takes affect for all PCs, or groupings of PCs, depending on how eTrust Antivirus is configured.”

 

HIPAA, Healthcare, Software and the Future
A future consideration for WellSpan, as for all healthcare organizations, is how the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) will affect operations. “We’re in the beginning stages of understanding HIPAA and what it’s going to be,” said Coleman. “Part of HIPAA is to keep information secure and protected, and eTrust Antivirus clearly does that.”