CAMPBELL, Calif., Jan. 13, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ForeScout Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of continuous monitoring and mitigation solutions for Global 2000 enterprises and government organizations, today announced that Northern Health and Social Care Trust (Northern Trust) selected ForeScout CounterACT™ to achieve greater visibility and control over the ever-growing number of devices accessing the organization's network that are neither Northern Trust-owned nor managed.
Established in April 2007, Northern Trust is one of five health trusts in Northern Ireland. It provides a broad range of health and social care services across 10 localities, including two large acute-care hospitals and six non-acute hospitals. Northern Trust provides services for a population of approximately 460,000, the largest demographic area of any trust in Northern Ireland, and has approximately 12,000 employees.
Northern Trust needed to gain visibility and control over the devices connecting to its network – including medical, clinical engineering and building management system (BMS) devices. Without this level of visibility, they faced significant risk in terms of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) network security and governance, as an ICT security incident potentially impacts the delivery of health and social care services to patients and clients. They looked for a solution that could secure its 15,000 endpoints across 150 sites that was not dependent on additional equipment or specific software version requirements and selected ForeScout CounterACT.
Upon deploying CounterACT, Pat Black, ICT Network and Security manager at Northern Health and Social Care Trust, and his team were particularly impressed with the agentless aspect of CounterACT. The fact that CounterACT provides device visibility and security scan and is capable of running a risk assessment of devices connected to the Trust's network - without having to install anything onto the individual devices - was seen as a significant factor in the organization's decision to purchase the ForeScout platform.
"We witnessed the power of CounterACT within a matter of hours of the appliance being installed. The network infrastructure environment that we work within has a significant number of connected devices that are neither Trust-owned nor managed. If a device presents a security or governance risk, a decision needs to be made quickly on how to effectively manage that risk, particularly if it is a compromised medical device," said Black. "ForeScout enables us to reduce the risk associated with these non-Trust owned and unmanaged devices and allows us to respond to incidents and alerts more quickly than we had ever been able to do in the past."
Northern Trust realized the following benefits after deploying CounterACT:
- Comprehensive, real-time visibility of the network including endpoints that are neither Trust-owned nor managed, e.g. medical, clinical engineering and BMS devices
- Real-time visibility of over 15,000 endpoints and proactive remediation of potential threats to guard against rogue users, devices and applications
- Secure and continuous network connectivity, which helps Northern Trust deliver uninterrupted critical health and social care services
- Increased ICT security and governance controls via simple policy configuration
- Easier and faster compliance reporting, e.g. Information Governance and ISO 27001, reducing manual overhead
- Rapid internal threat identification and remediation
"The approach we've been taking is to manage restrictions on connectivity such that they are at an absolute minimum, whilst maintaining appropriate levels of security and governance. In the health sector, connectivity - and indeed security - for medical devices, in particular, are essential in terms of uninterrupted delivery of critical health and social care services," explained Black. "With ForeScout, we can rest assured that we have visibility and, all importantly, control over devices connecting to our network."
Relevant Links
Northern Health and Social Care Trust Case Study
Tweet This: @ForeScout offers Northern Health and Social Care Trust real-time network visibility & control of endpoints: http://ow.ly/HbQeC
About ForeScout Technologies, Inc.
ForeScout enables organizations to continuously monitor and mitigate security exposures and cyberattacks. The company's CounterACT™ appliance dynamically identifies and evaluates network users, endpoints and applications to provide visibility, intelligence and policy-based mitigation of security problems. ForeScout's open ControlFabric™ architecture allows a broad range of IT security products and management systems to share information and automate remediation actions. Because ForeScout's solutions are easy to deploy, unobtrusive, extensible and scalable, they have been chosen by more than 1,800* of the world's most secure enterprises and government agencies in over 62 countries. Headquartered in Campbell, California, ForeScout offers its solutions through its global network of authorized partners. Learn more at http://www.forescout.com.
©2015 ForeScout Technologies, Inc. is a privately held Delaware corporation. ForeScout, the ForeScout logo, ControlFabric and CounterACT are trademarks or registered trademarks of ForeScout. Other names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.
*Data current as of 1/1/2015.