Healthcare IT Security

Cyber Defense Group, an incident response firm needed to gain visibility to contain a breach on a large healthcare facility’s network. With a complicated network environment stacked with legacy equipment, and staffed with basic onsite IT and an underperforming MSSP, the facility was overwhelmed.

The network seemed to work great when there was nothing wrong, but issues were quickly exposed during the attacks in this scenario. Once they were under attack, it became apparent that the network was not set up properly with zero visibility. The existing switches didn’t have the proper firmware updates, they weren’t configured correctly and had ingress / egress set up issues.

Solution

Out-of-band security and monitoring tools analyze packet data from the production network to provide insights or alerts for SecOps and NetOps teams to properly respond. These packets are delivered to solutions by either Network TAPs or SPAN ports both mirror traffic from ports to out-of-band solutions.

Cyber Defense Group utilized two Garland Technology ‘Breakout’ TAPs and one Bypass TAP, in aggregation mode to feed the proprietary tools they use for intrusion detection system (IDS), security monitoring, NGFW and log management. “We were able to get the visibility we needed quickly. That allowed us to do what we needed to do to find the bad guys and kick them out.”

Visibility Solution

Diagram 1: Three Garland Technology TAPs aggregating traffic to forensics or network analyzers tools.

TAP ‘Breakout’ mode sends each side of traffic to separate monitoring ports. Ensuring that no packet is lost to high-priority monitoring tools. Aggregation mode merges traffic streams into one monitoring port to reduce appliance costs, often used in combination with filtering taps, ie: filter, aggregate data streams.

When I found Garland, I got a network expert on the phone and they configured a custom solution for us. Really from the beginning, from sales to the solution, to support. I can’t say enough good things.”

-Lou Rabon, Founder/CEO Cyber Defense Group

Benefits

• After installing Garland’s network TAPs, CDG easily diagnosed and resolved the breach
• Not knowing what they needed, the Garland team helped design the deployment to quickly resolve the issue
• Improve risk assessment
• Enable security technology upgrades