In addition to ensuring availability of standard network services like e-mail and web access, health care IT groups face security and compliance challenges as more users including patients and visitors, want network access; and, many new medical devices and systems become IP-enabled.

These challenges are compounded by compliance regulations associated with The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act (HIPAA) that require protecting patient privacy and ensuring finegrained network access control.

Essential to addressing these challenges are core network services – IP address assignment and management (DHCP and IPAM), and domain name resolution (DNS), among others. If these services don’t work, the network and applications that hospitals, doctors, administrators and clinics rely on don’t work.


Shortcomings in conventional CNS solutions (i.e., general-purpose servers, operating systems, and freeware) can unexpectedly disrupt network availability, the applications that depend on them and, in turn, compromise patient care. Specific concerns in health care environments include:

• Requires many cycles and experts to maintain, upgrade and patch
• Unreliable
• Vulnerable to attacks, which can compromise HIPAA compliance
• Limited means to segment users
• No audit logs to investigate network breeches
• Poor scalability

Each server has to be managed independently and frequent updates/patching can consume already limited health care IT experts and resources. It is difficult to implement high-availability solutions and achieve failover. And, as more IP-enabled devices are introduced to the network and application demands increase, the need for more capacity and functionality can produce latency.

On the security front, legacy systems are open to attack, which can compromise system availability and integrity. Further, distinction between hospital administrative, patient and medical staff users with clear access rights – required to protect patient privacy – is nearly impossible to achieve with discrete conventional systems. There is also little means for IP address audit logs/lease history to investigate network breeches.

These inadequacies are not easily overcome using band-aids applied to existing systems, such as overlay management and data back-up systems.

Business Impacts of the “status quo” for Core Network Services

Health care organizations that use conventional approaches to deliver CNS are subject to:

• Downtime of key applications like wireless and diagnostics applications
• Inability to access key life-saving data and systems like patient records
• Cumbersome administrative cycles and high operating costs
• Attacks and breeches
• Regulatory compliance infractions
• Poor user satisfaction and compromised reputation

Ramifications like these merit deployment of a CNS infrastructure that is reliable, manageable and offers unique security advantages for health care environments.


To provide nonstop services, free experts to work on other critical projects, improve security and achieve regulatory compliance, health care IT organizations need to consider a nextgeneration approach to delivering and managing CNS infrastructure.

• Appliances deliver high availability services and secure infrastructure
• Grid technology ensures continuous uptime and centralized management
• “One-button” upgrades simplify maintenance & patching
• IP allocation history aide breech investigation
• Built-in IPAM simplifies tasks, enables delegation and reduces errors

Infoblox appliances enable “one-button” upgrades to accommodate new features and easy installation of the latest BIND releases. Additionally, the custom Infoblox NIOS™ operating software is hardened and, therefore, secure from vulnerabilities.

In addition to high availability (HA) between appliances, Infoblox’s Grid technology, which links appliances across a hospital campus and/or a WAN to satellite clinics into a unified, distributed system, provides resilience to network and equipment failures and central management.

In the event of a malicious attack, leveraging rich data, such as DHCP lease history, health care IT representatives can easily identify which port had a rogue device/address on it and shut down the port, device, and/or identify the malicious user to stop the incident or prevent them from accessing the network again. And, to accommodate health care organizational and compliance requirements to distinguish access rights by user (i.e. patient versus administrative staff), Infoblox enables user authentication at the time of IP address assignment to validate the identity of users before granting them access to a network, register unknown users, and ensure that only valid devices and users are granted full access to the appropriate systems.

Finally, with built-in IP address management (IPAM) for simplifying and automating repetitive daily tasks that can add costs and configuration error risks to your network, Infoblox delivers the real-time visibility and control you need for your network while reducing expenses and increasing availability.

Infoblox Benefits

• Continuous uptime
• Allow experts to work on other critical projects
• Automate tasks, reducing administrative overhead and costs
• Increase security
• Increase visibility into and control of who is on the network, when and where
• Enable regulatory compliance

To learn more about Infoblox solutions or to evaluate Infoblox products in your environment, please contact us at info@infoblox.com or call +1.408.625.4200.