The Challenge
Radiology Inc. had outgrown their Cisco Pix firewalls. The devices did not provide the radiological services company with the throughput required to conduct daily operations. Like many businesses, Radiology Inc saw its corporate network expand in ways unforeseen when they purchased their PIX. They expanded their network through VPN connections and point to point fiber circuits. Unfortunately they also found that their current system was limiting their abaility to expand as it wasn't flexible enough to handle the required number of secure VPN connections and packet filtering throughput needed for the company's operations. In order to continue serving their existing customer base and to grow an an organization, Nathan Thompson, Information System Specialist at Radiology Inc., needed to find a new security

The Requirements
Thompson began his search by outlining his requirements for the new product. "We needed a solution that could offer a flexible VPN configuration and handle multiple direct circuits to our customers", said Thompson. Additionally, because Radiology Inc. transmits medical images, such as X-rays, to remote facilities across their network, it was crucial that the new device could handle massive amounts of bandwidth. Also, since the information being transmitted includes sensitive medical data, the firewall had to protect the connections as well as segregate medical traffic from normal traffic and handle back up connections so that there was never any downtime.

The Solution
Prior to his search for a new device to replace the Cisco Pix, Thompson had not heard of Astaro. However, as he began researching network security devices he quickly determined that the Astaro Security Gateway was the right tool for Radiology Inc. "The more we looked at the product and tested its capabilities the better the Astaro Security Gateway looked to us. It had all the right features available at the right price. It was clear that this was the better solution to fit our needs," explained Thompson. Thompson decided to implement two Astaro Security Gateway 220s in an active-active environment to handle their business office network and email/web filtering. He also implemented two Astaro Security Gateway 425s in an active-active environment to create 40 site-to-site VPN tunnels and handle multiple gigs of Ethernet connections. Thompson continued: "We are using all the features the Astaro Security Gateway offers; peripheral VPN connections, web filtering, web proxying, and VoIP security as well as email filtering".

Success with Astaro
Since implementing the Astaro Security Gateways, the network has seen over 100 gigs of activity a day. Radiology Inc. was also able to add additonal sites to their network of medical providers. The company recently added two hospitals to their network via VPN connections and direct fiber connections, and hasn't experienced any decreased throughput due to the extra traffic. Thompson explained, "With the Cisco Pix, we were seeing a definate bottleneck in throughput and it couldn't handle any additional sites. This was limiting our ability to grow. But Astaro Security Gateway has been able to handle two times the throughput without any decrease in speed."