Douglas Macmillan Hospice is a charity which has been operating since 1973.  It provides free end of life care for people with life-limiting illnesses in the North Staffordshire area. Looking after approximately 3000 patients within the community, it has a 33 bed in-patient unit and a 28 place day unit. In addition to this, it supports the families and carers of current patients.  The hospice operates 24 hours a day, 365 days per year and has 23 retail charity stores, a lottery scheme, fundraising events and a legacy department to support fund raising efforts.

The Challenges

The IT department at the Douglas Macmillan Hospice looks after everything from phones systems, mobiles and laptops to servers and fibre network internet connections. Along with all the technology within the hospice, the IT team manage a cloud based till system in the retail stores.  The biggest challenge they faced, was not being able to immediately see when someone plugged their own device into the system. They needed a way to monitor what was going onto their network at any point in time.

Head of IT at Douglas Macmillan Hospice, Steve Ledoux commented that as well as patients, their families and carers regularly bring their own devices into the hospice and sometimes theses devices contain malware and do not have the correct antivirus software installed.

As well as complete visibly of their network, they were also looking for a Network Access Control (NAC) solution which would allow them to easily implement Cyber Essentials and the HSCN toolkit. In order to achieve this accredited certification, full visibility of the IT network and the devices attached to it at any time is required.  Following a lengthy evaluation of other products that did not meet their requirements for Cyber Resilience, they engaged with C-STEM* via a referral from another hospice organisation.

The Solution

C-STEM’s experience and knowledge whilst assisting Douglas Macmillan in qualifying the suitability and fit to meet the required success criteria, gave confidence in the solution recommended. Ledoux was impressed by the large feature set offered by the Forescout CounterACT**, including policy templates and automated control of non-compliant devices.

The CounterACT solution identifies simple facts such as somebody plugging their home laptop into the corporate network instead of the public network. The identified device can be matched to compliance policies for hardware and software asset management and if deemed non-compliant, is automatically moved to a safe place, fixed and brought back onto the network. Ledoux reflected that “the ability to VLAN a machine off was not something that we had seen before and made a lot of sense to us.”

Mike Hatherall, Head of Engineering at C-STEM commented “The implementation of the Forescout CounterACT enabled Douglas Macmillan to immediately obtain visibility and gain control over the corporate and IoT network. It quickly allowed them to appreciate what was required in order to achieve Cyber Security Essentials and to gain clarity over the security of their assets.”