Magazine Article | August 1, 2004

Virus Protection Keeps Hospital's E-Mail System Healthy

Source: Business Solutions Magazine
Business Solutions, August 2004

Hattiesburg Clinic (Hattiesburg, MS) is a multi-specialty medical center with 32 remote physician facilities, providing more than 1,000 computer users with workstation and e-mail access. When a problem such as a computer virus occurs, it is a heavy drain on the clinic's 11-employee IT department. For example, each occurrence of a suspected virus required a technician to travel as far as 90 minutes away and spend a minimum of 30 minutes at the location.

When Internet-based virus updates failed to work, the IT staff was overwhelmed. "We would have to generate lists of PCs that weren't being updated properly with new virus definitions and then perform a manual update of each of them," says Jerry Robinson, the clinic's network administrator. "Approximately 60% of our computers simply weren't receiving the virus updates and had to be serviced by our team."

When a virus did infect Hattiesburg's systems, its e-mail system, a critical component of the clinic's communications system, was inoperable for three days. The antivirus vendor insisted that the problem was with Hattiesburg's systems and didn't assist in restoring service, according to Robinson. After this experience, Robinson sought a new solution. "We wanted upgraded features, better centralized management, and automated updates," he says.

Automate Virus Protection
In March 2002, the clinic selected eTrust Antivirus from Computer Associates International, Inc. (Islandia, NY) due to features such as central server-provided updates. Hattiesburg Clinic's IT team implemented the new solution in phases with the support of Computer Associates, uninstalling the old solution and performing upgrades remotely.

Since eTrust Antivirus was fully implemented, the clinic's systems have been running smoothly. Before the system was implemented, the clinic's IT team received daily calls from users about suspected e-mail viruses. The team is no longer receiving such calls. And most importantly, notes Robinson, "The percentage of computers functioning properly and with virus protection has jumped from 40% to 99%."