McAfee SRM Delivers Comprehensive, Integrated Protection to Liberty Behavioral Management

Liberty Behavioral Management (Liberty) manages three inpatient facilities in New York, each offering a full continuum of care for clients coping with substance abuse and/or mental health issues. Additionally, Liberty manages 13 outpatient clinics that provide quality care options for those transitioning from inpatient stays or who are in need of less-intensive treatment. Liberty also provides management, marketing, and operational consultation services to various healthcare providers throughout New York and New Jersey.

A single, centralized IT and network operations center in New York, with eight IT staff, oversees the IT infrastructure for Liberty’s 500 users in New York and at remote corporate facilities in New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Need to protect access to distributed network and comply with HIPAA
“A distributed environment with no IT staff on site at remote facilities poses a network security challenge on many fronts,” says Greg Hopke, IT operations manager at Liberty. “We are always concerned about the threat of network disruption because it can lead to obstructed bandwidth or downtime, which can endanger access to critical patient and treatment information, which can impact diagnosis and quality of care.”

Unmanaged, noncompliant systems — such as home computers, PDAs, and contractors’ laptops — could easily open the door to malware and other unwanted intruders that could disrupt Liberty’s network. The company knew it needed visibility regarding all attempts to access its network, as well as the option to reliably block, allow, or restrict access based on compliance with Liberty’s security standards.

In addition, because Liberty is bound by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations, the company must ensure the protection and confidentiality of patients’ medical information — for instance, patient records documenting treatment for psychiatric disorders and addictions to alcohol and chemical substances. However, at each of the 13 patient sites, Liberty employees also need to be able to access such information. To protect patient medical records and other sensitive information such as billing records, Liberty needed more comprehensive protection of its desktops and servers, as well as more rigorous oversight of its Microsoft Exchange email system.

Integrated security solution accelerates deployment and reduces cost
A few years earlier, after its previous anti-virus solution failed to prevent the Sasser Virus from crippling its network, Liberty had turned to McAfee VirusScan® Enterprise and McAfee AntiSpyware Enterprise. Since installing these McAfee solutions on all of its desktops and servers, the company has experienced no virus outbreaks on its network and has improved desktop performance. Very satisfied with McAfee, Liberty nevertheless conducted a thorough evaluation to find the best solution to meet its intrusion prevention, email gateway, and network access control security needs.

Liberty’s short list of vendors to meet its security risk management (SRM) requirements included Internet Security Systems (now IBM), Symantec, and SourceFire, but the clear winner was McAfee. While feature support and comprehensive protection quality were crucial, the lower implementation costs and operational efficiency of the advanced version of McAfee Total Protection (ToPS) for Endpoint stood out.

"We’re a pretty small IT team, with a demanding user community. By deploying the McAfee Total Protection for Endpoint solution, we added needed protection without diverting scant time and energy from our existing IT projects. It seems like security only gets more complicated, but McAfee helps us keep it manageable."

Greg Hopke
IT Operations Manager, Liberty Behavioral Management Corporations

Because Liberty was already using McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) — a security management console for centralized control and reporting — adoption of the new McAfee products was straightforward, added little overhead to management time, and required no additional staff. With on-site help from a McAfee sales engineer and McAfee technical phone support, the Liberty team took just three weeks to plan, install, and configure its new network access controls.

By upgrading to McAfee ToPS for Endpoint, Liberty added to McAfee VirusScan Enterprise and McAfee AntiSpyware Enterprise the following integrated solutions:

• McAfee Security for Microsoft Exchange to efficiently analyze and filter the company’s incoming email messages and attachments, alerting IT and blocking suspicious content or behavioral patterns.
• McAfee Network Security Manager (formerly McAfee IntruShield Security Manager), to detect and prevent inappropriate or dangerous network traffic, protecting all paths to the servers that house sensitive medical records and other information.
• McAfee Network Access Control (NAC), to define network access policies, detect endpoints, assess endpoint compliance, enforce network access, and remediate endpoints to comply with policies.

Centralized security management console facilitates administration and compliance
McAfee ToPS for Endpoint tightly integrates all of Liberty’s McAfee network and system defenses, and McAfee ePO consolidates and eases their administration. The single, scalable management console’s real-time, customizable dashboard supports integrated monitoring, query, response, and reporting activities. Liberty used McAfee ePO to centrally configure, install, and deploy the McAfee ToPS for Endpoint and McAfee Security for Microsoft Exchange software. Liberty also uses McAfee ePO to dynamically update patches and virus signatures (DAT files) as threats emerge and policies evolve.

“McAfee ePO is a huge benefit for IT,” says Hopke. “Having one administrative console to look at to view the status of network and systems health or configure and deploy new software or updates makes the IT administrator’s job so much easier.”

McAfee ePO also facilitates compliance. “We have internal audits, policy reviews, and external audits for HIPAA, so we wanted a security solution that would make all these activities straightforward,” explains Hopke. “We love the way McAfee ePO integrates monitoring and reporting — it works the way we do.”

From rogue detection to comprehensive visibility
With McAfee Network Access Control, Liberty has moved seamlessly from basic rogue detection of systems to real-time scanning and control of all devices accessing the network. All systems attempting access can be analyzed before access to ensure consistent adherence to policies — leveraging Liberty’s existing policies and processes defined in McAfee ePO and working seamlessly across its Cisco switching and routing infrastructure. When McAfee NAC identifies a non-compliant system, it can immediately block access or dynamically reassign the access port to a virtual LAN where customizable, Web-based self-remediation guides the user to bring the system into compliance without IT intervention.

McAfee’s integrated SRM strategy suits Liberty’s IT team. We’re a pretty small IT team, with a demanding user community,” says Hopke. “By deploying the McAfee Total Protection for Endpoint — Advanced solution, we added needed protection without diverting scant time and energy from our existing IT projects. It seems like security only gets more complicated, but McAfee helps us keep it manageable.”