OVERVIEW

Assaf Harofeh Medical Center is the fourth largest university hospital in Israel and the center of the Shfela region, serving a population of about 1.5 million in the central and lowland areas. Employing a staff of approximately 3,400, the outpatient clinics, emergency room, hospital, and maternity ward are backed by dozens of departments, institutes, clinics, and laboratories in all sub-specialties.

Assaf Harofeh’s IT department serves the hospital as well as Shmuel Harofeh Hospital and the Abu Kabir Forensic Medicine Institute. The Medical Center’s five-member system and information security develops, maintains, upgrades, and integrates any technology purchased by the medical center, while investigating new technology as well as running an external emergency response team.

Their IT system consists of 500 servers, along with 2,600 workstations and two active-active servers that assist approximately 4,000 users.

CHALLENGES

As hospitals operate with a 100 percent policy of availability, computer systems as well as medical systems, should operate 24/7. The real challenge is creating an uncompromising operational continuum. In addition to operational continuity, Assaf Harofeh must ensure that their systems are interoperable with the various defense systems, comply with the regulations dictated by the Ministry of Health, and decide which systems they can integrate to help support the medical center’s vision and meet any challenges.

Assaf Harofeh deals with thousands of events a year and understand that in order to remain better protected, they must invest in the education of users alongside the technological solutions they implement.

WHY TREND

Assaf Harofeh chose to protect their systems with Trend Micro’s defense solutions due to the company’s unique technology offerings, powered by their knowledgeable team. Participating in the planning of the hospital, Trend Micro’s team eventually became just as familiar with the medical center’s systems as Assaf Harofeh’s IT specialists had become.

Assaf Harofeh was impressed with Trend Micro’s variety of solutions. This mix provides automation to save management resources, offer advanced reports, visibility for every endpoint, and the ability to detect problems at the highest level. Trend Micro provides Assaf Harofeh with a true robust next gen system, armed with machine learning to give their CTO peace of mind.

SOLUTION

Under the tutelage of Assaf Harofeh project manager, Guy Segev, the medical center was equipped with a variety of Trend Micro solutions. Starting with OfficeScan™ to protect endpoints using machine learning technology, Segev oversaw the inclusion of ScanMail™ for Microsoft® Exchange™ for email protection, Trend Micro™ Data Loss Prevention, Trend Micro™ Vulnerability Protection, Trend Micro™ Control Manager™ for centralized management, Trend Micro™ Deep Security™ for server protection, and Trend Micro™ Deep Discovery™ Analyzer.

RESULTS

Assaf Harofeh has reduced their operational cost in system maintenance significantly with the use of Deep Security. Upgrading to the latest version of the endpoint protection solution enables the medical center to benefit from machine learning and automation, improving reporting capabilities significantly, so even non-IT managers can understand these capabilities along with their significance within the ongoing operation of the medical center. “Trend Micro gives the hospital maximum visibility of all the systems, applications, and environments, and of course, the hospital’s networks”, said Tal Avitan.

WHAT'S NEXT

With more than 60 years of service, Assaf Harofeh Medical Center plans to remain an important part of Israel’s health sector and healthcare security. “As a result of our close partnership with Trend Micro, we have become leaders in the healthcare system. We are the first to hear about attacks, even before the cyber authority. I feel I have a lateral sector responsibility for part of my experience for the entire health sector in Israel.” said Avitan.