BlueCat Networks Focus On Healthcare

IP Address Management, DNS, and DHCP Solutions Helping Healthcare Organizations Improve Patient Care Healthcare infrastructure is moving to the network. From wireless devices and IP phones, to mobile IV pumps and X-ray machines the number of IP-enabled smart devices has increased significantly. Applications and ‘workstations on wheels’ now accompany caregivers into patient rooms, making the technology essential for doctors and nurses attending to patient care. This evolution of smart devices is also driving an increase in the number of IP addresses and DNS records that need to be tracked and managed. In the past, when networks were smaller and less dynamic, you could use spreadsheets or homegrown tools to track addresses and devices. However, the continued influx of IP-enabled devices makes it significantly more difficult to use such basic tools because they lack many essential features such as delegated access control, auditing and workflow. And while traditional DHCP servers provide basic functionality such as the dynamic allocation of IP addresses and options, but they often lack enterprise features such as automated failover or the ability to warn when a network is approaching capacity. Today’s networks are larger and more complex. You need to find a better solution to manage your IP address infrastructure. Figure 1: Bed-side devices commonly found in hospitals BlueCat Networks has years of experience providing IP address management, DHCP, and DNS solutions to assist healthcare providers who face some of the following challenges: Centrally manage and track wired and wireless IP networks and IP-enabled devices.  Ensure service continuity and guarantee availability with redundant DHCP and DNS systems. Automate routine and repetitive management tasks. Adhere to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance requirements. Integrate with existing applications and infrastructure, including Microsoft Windows™ and virtual systems.

Centralized Management

The adoption of wireless LANs in hospitals and health care facilities is rising; voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is being adopted in increasing numbers, and as portability becomes a requirement, more and more IP-enabled medical devices are being added to the network. This complexity is exacerbated by the fact that DNS and DHCP servers are often deployed across different campuses, clinics and facilities. Because traditional DNS and DHCP tools do not share data with each other or with spreadsheets, this makes everything more complicated to manage.

Proteus BlueCat Networks' IP Address Management (IPAM) system lets you aggregate your IP, DNS, and DHCP data so that you benefit from a centralized view using a unified management tool. Every IP network and address throughout your enterprise is displayed in a graphical interface, including related attributes such as DHCP lease information, MAC addresses and DNS host names. This provides you with a level of visibility and control that allows you to reduce management and troubleshooting time considerably.

Powerful Search Tools

With networks, IP addresses, and DNS objects numbering in the thousands, it can be difficult to find the data you need  quickly and easily using traditional tools.  The Proteus global search tool allows you to quickly locate any object in the IPAM database by IP address, DNS name, MAC address, or associated attribute. Using a sophisticated pattern matching mechanism, Proteus takes you to the appropriate page immediately, considerably reducing the time needed to troubleshoot issues and allowing you to implement your changes and updates to your current network configuration.

The Find First Available Network and Find First Unassigned Address tools take the guesswork out of provisioning IP objects in your enterprise. The Find First Available Network tool searches your IP structure for the first available unallocated network. The Find First Unassigned Address tool searches for the first unassigned IP address. Both tools significantly reduce the time and effort required to provision new networks and addresses.

Smart Data

Although IP addresses are generally managed using a traditional structure of IP networks and subnetworks, in reality your IP-enabled devices are located in patient rooms, nursing stations, and operating rooms. You should be able to manage these devices in the same way. Proteus provides a system of smart ‘object tags’ to group data based on your specific environment. Grouping objects into a hierarchical tag structure allows you to find a specific device by real-world names and locations such as  Hospital > Emergency > Triage rather than by the less intuitive IP block > IP network > IP address.

Figure 2: In this object tag structure the Hospital tag group is a parent object of tags based on Emergency, ICU and Radiology departments. You can create additional set of tags  for each department, location etc.

Proteus also gives you the ability to associate metadata attributes, such as a serial number, manufacturer, or asset tag)with any object in the system. Associating user-defined fields with objects allows you to create more intuitive and useful reports, and  to search for objects in far more flexible ways than by IP address alone.

Resilient Network Infrastructure

With the number of critical systems and users relying on network connectivity, you cannot afford a DHCP or DNS failure. Your network relies on a resilient infrastructure designed with fault tolerance in mind. Disruptions to DHCP and DNS can result from hardware failure, service or configuration errors and natural disasters. DNS topologies are more inherently fault tolerant because of their multi-master or primary-secondary design. On the other hand, DHCP servers require a fault-tolerant strategy to reduce their vulnerability to failure. Most of the time, a fault-tolerant DHCP design consists of scope-splitting in which ranges of DHCP addresses are distributed between servers using a 50/50 or 80/20 split. Although scope-splitting provides a modicum of fault-tolerance, it does not provide a means for DHCP servers to share or synchronize data, meaning that losing a server usually means losing half of the available addresses.

BlueCat offers a number of solutions to ensure DHCP, DNS and IP address management continuity:

• Crossover High Availability (XHA) for DNS and DHCP system redundancy with automated failover in the event of a hardware or service failure.
• DHCP Failover for geographically dispersed systems, and for environments in which failover makes more sense.
• Separation of services between the management layer and the DNS and DHCP servers to ensure that a problem on the management layer does not affect the service layer.
• Layered data checking and validation to ensure the integrity of data pushed to the DNS and DHCP servers.
• A workflow system whereby junior administrators’ changes must be approved before being implemented on the system, ensuring that accountability remains with those in charge.
• A clustering system that allows two physically separate Proteus systems to maintain identical copies of IPAM data.
• Automated remote database backups, allowing appliances to be loaded with the most current backup in minutes.

Table 1:  How BlueCat addresses Network Outages

Integration with Windows™ DNS and DHCP Servers

Many hospitals and healthcare facilities use Windows™ DNS and DHCP servers to provide services for their IP infrastructure. While the Windows™ DNS and DHCP management tools offer basic functionality, there is little to no integration between them, preventing you from getting a complete view of your IP address and DNS resources. In addition, these tools lack important enterprise features such as workflow, global search, auditing, and the ability to send alerts when you are in danger of approaching maximum system capacity. The Proteus Management Agent (PMA) for Windows™ brings the benefits of IP Address Management to your Windows™ DNS and DHCP environment.  Allowing you to view IP addresses, DNS names, and DHCP lease data together, Proteus presents a complete picture of the network at all times. DHCP lease data and dynamic DNS (DDNS) notifications are sent in real-time to Proteus, so that you can see the updates as soon as they are issued.

Whether you want to use Proteus to manage your Windows™ DNS and DHCP servers, or prefer the read-only functionality to provide visibility into your network, the PMA adds a new level of management into your Windows™ environment.

Compliance

Hospitals and healthcare organizations are required to comply with security standards set out by HIPAA. IP Address Management solutions can help by providing real-time and historical data about configuration management, network usage, service availability and network access control.

Logging – Proteus transaction logging allows you to answer the following essential questions:

• Who performed the action?
• What action was performed?
• When did the action occur?
• From which IP address did the action originate?

A robust and powerful logging system allows you to identify the source of a problem and resolve it in a timely manner.

Configuration Management – Proteus organizes IP data into blocks and networks allowing you to deploy segregated networks to clearly identify and separate networks with confidential patient information from the rest of the network. This can be especially useful if you are providing internet access for patients.

Fine-grained Access Control – Proteus offers a role-based administration model allowing you to define granular permissions throughout the system so that you can distribute the administrative workload and restrict access to data only to the people who need it.

3rd party authentication model – Proteus supports common 3rd party authentication systems such as Kerberos, LDAP, and RADIUS so that you can leverage your existing authentication infrastructure and keep password control where it belongs.

Open Application Programming Interface (API)

Proteus includes an open standards Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) based API that allows you to integrate with third-party provisioning systems, custom workflow systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages, and network management tools such as HP OpenView™. Many BlueCat customers use the Proteus API to build custom portals into existing systems, so that their users do not need to learn new tools. In addition, the open nature of the Proteus API means that you can work with almost any programming language. For compliance purposes, actions performed using the API are tracked in the audit log.

Virtualization

As part of an overall solution, BlueCat offers VMware-based Proteus IPAM and Adonis DNS and DHCP virtual appliances. Organizations are investing in virtual infrastructure to reduce their costs, carbon footprint, and to add a degree of flexibility in coping with today’s dynamic business requirements. Incorporating a virtualized solution brings significant advantages:

• Lower energy consumption by running fewer servers.
• Rapidly deploying new infrastructure in a fraction of the time that it takes to deploy physical appliances.
• Take advantage of VMware’s built-in disaster recovery tools.
• Reduce capital and operating expenditures.

Whether combining virtual and physical appliances, or adopting a complete virtual environment, BlueCat’s virtual offerings allow you to leverage your existing virtualization investment.

Professional Design, Implementation and Support

DNS and DHCP topologies are sometimes overlooked and are not always optimized for security and performance. BlueCat Networks Professional Services has years of experience in assisting health care organizations to design and deploy IP infrastructure solutions using industry best practices.

Our standard Technical Support offers 24 x 7 service to ensure complete coverage. Backed by seasoned experts in DNS, DHCP, and IP address management, our support services provide not only incident response and management, but also technical guidance and recommendations in helping you deploy a robust, secure, and reliable DDI infrastructure.

For those who desire a more customized type of care, BlueCat presents the Technical Account Manager (TAM) program offering  premium service delivering a personalized level of technical support to customers. The TAM program assigns a senior technical support contact (equivalent to a Level 3-escalations analyst or higher) to manage the delivery of all support services.

Summary – Providing IPAM Intelligence to Healthcare

Bluecat Networks’ appliance-based and virtual solutions provide you with a resilient DNS and DHCP infrastructure ensuring continuous delivery of the network services your staff relies on to efficiently attend to patient care. Our IPAM solution brings greater visibility, control, and continuity to your networks through centralization of your IP address, DNS, and DHCP data while integrating with your existing Windows DNS/DHCP environment.

Being able to monitor the health of your networks and ensure service continuity is fundamental to the continuum of care and BlueCat’s solution lets you rely on your network infrastructure to improve patient care and lower service costs without introducing unwanted risks.

About BlueCat Networks

Founded in 2001, BlueCat Networks – the IPAM Intelligence Company is a leader in providing enterprise-class IP Address Management (IPAM) platforms and secure DNS/DHCP network appliances. BlueCat services an account base of over 1000 clients with thousands of units sold worldwide. Our award-winning Proteus™ IPAM platform and Adonis™ family of DNS/DHCP appliances has successfully garnered end-user acceptance in meeting the rising IP management demands of healthcare, government, financial services, education, retail, and manufacturing organizations.

BlueCat Networks, a worldwide market leader in IPAM innovation and thought leadership, is benchmarking IPAM excellence in the networking industry. BlueCat Networks has experienced overwhelming market acceptance of its networking solutions, resulting in high double-digit growth, year after year, since the company’s inception.

BlueCat Networks is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific region. It sells networking appliances and services worldwide through direct and indirect sales channels in over 32 countries.

To Learn More

For more information on BlueCat Networks, and our award winning Proteus IPAM solution, please visit our website at www.bluecatnetworks.com or call us at 1-866-895-6931.