Strengthened Network Security

Network Security Strengthened with NAC & IPS

The Client

Large Health & Wellness Nonprofit

An annual IT controls audit at a large, well-established nonprofit revealed unaddressed network vulnerabilities. Its board tasked the IT department to respond with strengthened security controls to meet the unmet requirements, doing so with limited additional budget. They turned to Impelix to re-architect their network, hardening it with NAC and IPS, to power a dramatic turnaround in the following year’s testing.

The Challenge

Meeting Audit’s Requirements

Lacking the necessary expertise and resources on staff, the VP of IT relied on Impelix to build an evolved security controls framework focused on network access control and an intrusion prevention system, accomplished with a limited budget and, importantly, ready for the following year’s audit.

Lacked the necessary expertise to harden a network in time for

next year’s audit

The Solution

A New Design & Technology

In reconstructing the network, Impelix migrated to a new firewall technology and installed security devices at all 30-plus remote locations, expanding the nonprofit’s firewall protection from just their main data center to the entire WAN, thereby affording a proper IPS. The rollout of firewalls at every LAN also allowed Impelix to accomplish NAC by way of instituting controls and policies that now governed the traffic between newly created network segments.

A re-architected network featuring access control and intrusion prevention

The Results

The result was an entirely new network hardened against intrusions, with tightened access and increased control and visibility—all delivered under budget and on time.

Impelix evolved the nonprofit’s security framework with a much more comprehensive and layered model, utilizing best practices and the new technology’s full features and functionality. The result was an entirely new network hardened against intrusions, with tightened access and increased control and visibility—all delivered under budget and on time.

With the new network security in full effect, the next year’s audit took place. “The year before, it took them less than 30 minutes to penetrate the network. This year, it took them 3 days! And even then, they couldn’t say how they did it,” said the VP of IT. “In one year, we accomplished a dramatic improvement with our testing results. We were more than pleased.”

“I’ve gotten access to the whole organization, including the Partners, who are only a call away,” commented the VP of IT. “Impelix has become a valued extension of our team, because they actually care that things work.”