Medical Council of Canada Streamlines Remote Access Management for Employees, Committee Members and Physicians

CASE STUDY: MEDICAL COUNCIL OF CANADA

Medical Council of Canada

Industry: Not For Profit

Headquarters: Ottawa, Canada

Users Accessing 300 employees,the Remote committee members,Access Portal: physicians, medical students and universities

Yearly number over 11,000of medicalstudent andgraduateassessments:

Website: http://mcc.ca

Background

The Medical Council of Canada (MCC) strives to achieve the highest level of

medical care for Canadians through excellence in evaluation of physicians.

It assesses over 11,000 medical students and graduates every year through

its examinations. The MCC is also a leader in verifying and storing physician

credentials, which the candidate can share with medical organizations across

Canada.

The Canadian medical community relies on the MCC to administer

examinations, provide results and verify and store physician credentials. The

physiciansapply.ca portal is a secure location where students and physicians

can apply for examinations, view exam results, have credentials verified and

apply for medical registration.

Challenge: Aging firewalls and a difficult to access portal

The MCC IT department recognized the fact that its firewalls no longer

met the needs of its sophisticated testing environment. “We needed a

security solution with improved application layer visibility,” said Eli Haiby,

Senior Systems Administrator at the MCC. Additionally, MCC employees and

committee members who work remotely from home offices and hospital

environments were struggling with the SSL VPN portal. “Our users were

experiencing access issues. People want to be able to use their tablets and

iPads, but they were encountering connectivity issues depending on the

device and browser they were using,” continued Haiby.

The MCC conducted in-depth research, which included speaking with leading

technology vendors and studying the Gartner Magic Quadrant firewalls and

remote access research reports. Upon narrowing down the playing field to two

potential solutions, the IT department built a list of requirements and invited

vendors and their partners to participate in a proof of concept (POC).

S c a l a r D e c i s i o n s I n c .

CASE STUDY: MEDICAL COUNCIL OF CANADA

Objectives

Provide a user friendly

solution for remote access

users, allowing secure

login from any device

Improve application

layer visibility, line speed

routing and intrusion

prevention

Ability to securely publish

MCC web applications

Solution: Enhanced visibility, security and access control with

Palo Alto and F5

Scalar partnered with Palo Alto Networks and F5, proposing a solution

that combined application control and visibility with Palo Alto 3050 next-

generation firewalls and unified access control with the F5 Access Policy

Manager (APM). Working with the MCC throughout the 6-month competitive

POC process, the Scalar professional services team provided ongoing

knowledge transfer in order to get the IT staff comfortable with the new

technology.

Upon completion of the POC, the project was awarded to Scalar. “After the

pilot, we went with Scalar because they have a very bright team of people

who are experts in this space,” said Haiby. “They actually took the time to

guide us and explained what they were doing along the way,” he continued.

CASE STUDY: MEDICAL COUNCIL OF CANADA

S c a l a r D e c i s i o n s I n c .

“After the pilot, we went with Scalar

because they have a very bright

team of people who are experts in

this space. They actually took the

time to guide us and explained what

they were doing along the way,”

Solution

Palo Alto 3050 Next-

Generation Firewalls

Unified access control with

F5 Access Policy Manager

Ongoing knowledge

transfer throughout the

project

Project rollout: Testing makes perfect

Working closely with the MCC, Scalar mapped out deployment timelines and a

solid testing strategy. This first stage involved the set-up of the F5 APMs in a

testing environment. During this phase, the MCC was busy preparing end user

documentation and policy reviews, ensuring a smooth transition experience

for the employees, committee members, physicians and universities, who are

all users of the remote access portal. The team was then given a

window of time overnight to stage a test deployment, identifying

and documenting every issue and fix, paving the way to a smooth

cutover. “During the night of the cutover, we got all of our IT

staff involved, going through each test scenario,” said Haiby. “I

am happy to say that we did not experience any downtime,” he

continued. In addition to the primary data centre, the MCC has

a disaster recovery site where a Palo Alto firewall was set-up to

replicate for essential services only.

Results: Drop in support calls, happy end users

The MCC experienced visibility improvements and performance gains. The IT

staff has a much better understanding of what is happening in the network

and is able to quickly detect malicious behavior. It is also noticing fewer

support calls and has experienced positive feedback from employees and

committee members. “We used to receive support calls from physicians and

employees who were unable to access the old SSL VPN because they were

logging in from a particular browser or device. Those calls have really tapered

off,” said Haiby. “We have seen marked improvements in the SharePoint

application and we can now publish MCC web applications securely within the

appliance,” he continued.

Positive feedback from users accessing the MCC’s web applications continues

to come in. “The remote access solution has been an important upgrade to

our systems and has improved the efficiency of our day-to-day work,” said

Tanya Rivard, Test Development Officer of the Evaluation Bureau.

For more information, please visit http://www.scalar.ca

For the latest news, visit our blog at http://blog.scalar.ca

CASE STUDY: MEDICAL COUNCIL OF CANADA

S c a l a r D e c i s i o n s I n c .

“The remote access solution has

been an important upgrade to

our systems and has improved the

efficiencyofourday-to-daywork”