Palo Alto Networks today announced that ThedaCare, the third largest health care employer in the state of Wisconsin, has selected the PA-4000 Series next-generation firewall to gain visibility and control of application traffic and improve threat prevention.
Serving a diverse population in Wisconsin for over 100 years, ThedaCare provides an array of comprehensive health services including home care and assisted living. Everyday over 5,300 employees help improve the health of patients at ThedaCare’s 30 locations throughout the state, including four hospitals.
ThedaCare’s application response times were extremely slow and the company was reaching its Internet bandwidth capacity on a daily basis. Appropriate usage policies were in place, but ThedaCare’s IT team found them difficult to enforce because they were unable to peer into their network to match application usage to specific IP addresses. ThedaCare was using a single appliance for firewall, URL filtering, proxy and email virus protection, but it found the device’s user interface difficult to navigate, its visibility into security threats limited and software upgrades cumbersome. Performance also decreased with each new function ThedaCare activated. Thus, ThedaCare chose the PA-4000 Series to replace its current firewall, resulting in increased application visibility and control, the ability to more rigorously scan for malware, better web content filtering and improved performance.
"Before installing the PA-4000 Series, we never had the ability to break down Internet traffic on our network to truly see what was bogging it down," said Rick Rohde, Technology Development Engineer for ThedaCare. "Palo Alto Networks helped us see exactly how our network bandwidth was being used. Now our firewall is much easier to manage, our network is faster and we’ve created more room for business applications. And most importantly, we can safely enable the applications the business needs using Palo Alto Networks next generation firewalls."
"We advise customers on their security infrastructures all the time," said Mark Sollazo of SynerComm, a Palo Alto Networks reseller partner based in Wisconsin." “Palo Alto Networks is a game-changing technology for many enterprises because it does more than improve security, it also reduces operational costs."
"For health care organizations like ThedaCare, compliance and security cannot override access to critical patient care data," said Steve Mullaney, Vice President of Marketing for Palo Alto Networks. "Palo Alto Networks enables access to critical applications as well as non-business related applications while managing risk appropriately."
About Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks™ enables visibility and policy control of applications running on enterprise networks. Based on innovative App-ID™ application classification technology, the Palo Alto Networks PA-4000 Series next-generation firewall accurately identifies applications – regardless of port, protocol, evasive tactic or even SSL encryption – at 10Gbps with no performance degradation. Enterprises can now set and enforce application usage policies to meet compliance requirements, improve threat mitigation and lower operational costs. The Palo Alto Networks team includes security and networking industry veterans from Check Point, NetScreen, McAfee, Cisco, Juniper and Blue Coat. It is backed by investors Globespan Capital Partners, Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital. For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.
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