Canadian Government Agency Interior Health Deploys TippingPoint IPS to Protect Critical Network Infrastructure

TippingPoint , a leader in network security solutions and a division of 3Com, announced that Interior Health, a health authority established by the government of British Columbia, has selected the TippingPoint ® Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) to protect its systems from the latest security attacks. Interior Health selected TippingPoint for its Digital Vaccine ® (DV) filter sets and overall ease of use. Uncompromising security and simplified management are two of the critical factors that drove the development of TippingPoint’s new IPS Platform. These security requirements are key elements of 3Com’s Secure Network Fabric , which integrates security platforms from TippingPoint with LAN infrastructure equipment from H3C, the enterprise networking brand of 3Com, to provide comprehensive security at any point on the network under a unified policy management.

Interior Health, located in the Southern Interior of British Columbia in Western Canada, is one of the largest employers in the area with more than 19,000 employees. The organization is recognized as a technology innovator – both for the medical devices, as well as for technologies and procedures that govern the company’s operations. Prior to deploying TippingPoint, Interior Health was running an open source, internally-customized IPS solution.

“As a government entity, we are often targeted with very specific and unique security threats. We are also on a very tight budget, which was why we first deployed the open source IPS,” stated Kris Jmaeff, information security systems specialist with Interior Health. “However, the signature development and tuning required to keep this system up-to-date was becoming cost prohibitive from a time and resources standpoint. We needed a commercial-grade product that would give us the customized protection we need, at a price we could afford and that was relatively easy to set up and maintain.”

In the spring of 2009, Interior Health decided to evaluate commercial IPS solutions to replace the other IPS solution. The staff looked at three different IPS vendors evaluating each for performance, security filters, manageability and ease of deployment. “We were very impressed with the quality of the TippingPoint product,” said Jmaeff. “Out of all the vendors we looked at, we found TippingPoint to be the easiest to use and customize for our environment. The Digital Vaccine filters delivered each week automatically to the IPS make it much easier to keep current on our threat protection – especially for zero days. This allows us to spend our time on other pressing issues.”

Interior Health has been using the TippingPoint IPS for several months and has seen a significant reduction in the time the staff spends on maintaining the IPS – and no reduction in the security coverage. The organization has been extremely satisfied with the IPS performance and an influential beta tester of the TippingPoint N-Platform .

The recently announced TippingPoint N-Platform meets the security demands of data center and core network deployments with a newly-designed Threat Suppression Engine (TSE) that adds significant capacity for deep packet traffic inspection and the addition of multiple filter packs and security services without impacting performance. The combination of increased security services and accurate, timely development and deployment of Digital Vaccine (DV) filters without impacting performance provides the most comprehensive ‘zero day’ protection and lowers the total cost of ownership.

About TippingPoint and 3Com

TippingPoint is the enterprise security brand of 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS), a $1.3 billion global enterprise networking solutions provider that sets a new price/performance standard for customers. 3Com has three global brands — H3C , 3Com , and TippingPoint — that offer high-performance networking and security solutions to enterprises large and small. TippingPoint leads the advancement of network security with a modern network security platform and intrusion prevention system (IPS), purpose-built to protect today’s next-generation data center network from evolving, global security threats. TippingPoint helps organizations reduce security operating costs while ensuring maximum business continuity. For more information on TippingPoint, please visit www.tippingpoint.com , or the press center at www.tippingpoint.com/press .