Memorial Hospital Automates Patching for 2,300 Endpoints Across Its Distributed Network with Action1
The Organization
Memorial Health is an independent health system encompassing Memorial Hospital’s main campus, an outpatient facility (Memorial City Gate Medical Center), an outpatient surgery center, a skilled nursing facility (Memorial Gables), and a network of over 53 physicians and mid-level providers under Memorial Medical Group. It offers a comprehensive range of medical services and care to the community.
Location:
Marysville, OH
Industry:
Healthcare
Website:
Results:
- Automated patching for OS and third-party applications and visibility into update status, ensuring the timely addressing of security vulnerabilities.
- Automated deployment of third-party industry-specific applications.
- Simplified communication with upper management by consolidating information in one unit, equipping the IT team with evidence for explaining the need for downtime.
- Annual cost savings of $15,000.
Expansion of the Hospital Network Reveals Security Challenges
Over the last 10 years, Memorial Hospital has been experiencing significant growth. Starting from a single-site hospital, the organization has built a comprehensive network of medical sites located in the region. The Memorial team does not plan to stop here, having large-scale projects in mind, such as restructuring and expanding the busy emergency department.
With such massive growth, it became increasingly difficult for the IT department at Memorial Hospital to manage security updates and applications on the endpoints they were acquiring. The team was using on-premises tools like WSUS and Goverlan, which were complex, didn’t work for remote endpoints, required them to manually schedule downtime, download and install updates, and initiate reboots. “We never knew which machines would receive updates,” says James Legge, Lead Sr. System Administrator at Memorial Hospital. “This exposed us to security risks, as one vulnerable endpoint could enable adversaries to breach our defenses, launch ransomware attacks, potentially crippling the organization, and incurring significant costs, given our responsibility for safeguarding personal and health data.”
Additionally, the tools Memorial Hospital used didn’t allow automated software deployment for their industry-specific programs, which often required complex scripts. As only one IT team member had scripting skills, these limitations caused installation delays, enduser frustration, and disruptions in their workflow.
To mitigate these challenges, James and his team started to look for a solution that would enable them to be proactive in addressing vulnerabilities and establish a holistic approach to manage patches and applications on their endpoints.
Reframing the Approach with Action1
James evaluated several solutions that offer patching, including NinjaOne, PDQ, Splashtop, and chose Action1. “The patch management functionality from other vendors didn’t compare to what Action1 offers,” says James. “Additionally, many of them provided on-site software, and their feature sets left much to be desired. Action1 brings everything together in one cohesive unit that allows us to do all the tasks that we need.”
Yielding Game-Changing Results
Using the Action1 platform, Memorial Hospital has achieved transformative gains:
- Action1 helps the IT team gain real-time visibility into vulnerabilities, sort them by CVSS score, prioritize them, and establish an action plan to remediate vulnerabilities, eliminating the need to manage this process through multiple disorganized reports.
- Action1 enables automated patching for operation system (OS) and third-party applications, including industry-specific applications, based on a regular schedule. It also provides the IT team with visibility into update status. As a result, the platform not only saves the IT team hours by eliminating manual work, but also enhances security and brings peace of mind.
- Thanks to Action1’s script library, scripting skills are no longer required each time the IT team needs to push software to endpoints, making this task doable for all team members. As a result, Memorial Hospital’s employees enjoy a smoother user experience, as they no longer have to wait hours to get their applications installed.
- The platform equips the IT team with valuable insights to explain the need for actions such as scheduling downtime for patch deployment and reporting on remediation results to upper management.
- Action1 has become a cost-effective solution for the hospital, allowing it to save $15,000 per year.
Thanks to Action1, the Memorial Hospital IT department is now well-set to support its continued organizational expansion. The platform excels their IT productivity, streamlining patch management across complex environments thanks to its powerful automation capabilities, scalability, and cloud-native architecture.
What we did before, using our server to push updates, was unreliable. With Action1, it‘s so easy to see the systems that are out of date and control the remediation process from a single dashboard.
James Legge, Lead Sr. System Administrator at Memorial Hospital.
Eliminating IT Headaches: Remarkable Ease of Deployment
As an enterprise IT leader, James appreciated that Action1 is specifically designed for organizations with distributed networks to ensure a quick installation experience. He highlights the deployment ease, saying, “There was no need for manual intervention. I started the process before leaving late afternoon, and by the time I returned in the morning, everything was up and running.”
This simplicity is vital for James because, during the initial setup of endpoints, it’s easy to overlook software installations, especially when dealing with a new solution. Additionally, Action1 seamlessly integrated with Memorial Hospital’s Active Directory structure, further eliminating the need for manual work at the solution adoption stage.
