ELM Enterprise Manager Case-Studies

World Renowned University Hospital in Sweden Ensures a Healthy Line of Defense for Its IT Network Using Software from Vancouver, Washington Company

Company Profile Karolinska Hospital, located in Stockholm, is one of the largest university hospitals in Sweden and is recognized globally for its contributions to medical science. Patients come to Karolinska from all over Sweden and Europe because of its specialized treatment programs and research facilities. In addition to having a comprehensive childrens hospital and the largest lab facility in the Nordic region, Karolinska is a leader in women´s health, and a research pioneer in the area of chronic diseases and cancer care which has been a specialty for more than 60 years.

Technology Challenge
Karolinska is open around the clock for emergency and multi trauma cases. On an average day, almost 9,000 medical personnel and staff at Karolinska receive over 25,000 phone calls, perform 150 surgical operations and more than 41,000 laboratory analyses, assist with 15 births, admit about 50 patients arriving in ambulances, provide 2,000 medical consultants and serve more than 5,000 meals. Karolinska focuses core attention on its patients which means that technology - in particular problems with technology - cannot get in the way of healthcare. You cannot focus on your patients if you are distracted by a problem with email or other system services.

Solution Profile
Karolinskas biggest need was to consistently and comprehensively monitor the event logs on its Windows servers around the clock in order to alert the hospital to irregularities or potential security threats on its network. To fulfill the requirements of this technology challenge, the hospital reviewed several monitoring solutions. After narrowing the list down to two, Karolinska eliminated one of the solutions because it required too much manual scripting. Because it was easy to use and feature-packed, Karolinska chose ELM Enterprise Manager as its monitoring solution. The planning stage of the monitoring project took only a short time. According to Lund, "Most of the planning involved configuring alerts, rules and notification methods, which took a day or so. Once I was ready to configure and deploy Agents that took about 10 minutes per server."

Besides keeping tabs on their event logs, Lund and his fellow administrators find other advantages to using ELM Enterprise Manager. "It also helps us stay ahead of potential disasters" said Lund. "It alerts us when the health of one of our systems is in jeopardy." For Lund and his fellow administrators, using ELM is an ongoing project. "We are monitoring 40 servers now, but we get new systems all of the time," said Lund. "ELM makes us more efficient and provides us with a high level of visibility for our servers."

Glenview State Bank Uses ELM Enterprise Manager From TNT Software for Audit Compliance and Proactive Datacenter Management

Company Profile
Since 1921, Glenview State Bank (GSB) in Glenview, Ill., has been serving community banking needs in the Chicago suburbs with a full line of financial products for individuals and businesses. With facilities in Glenview, Northbrook, Northfield and Arlington Heights, Ill., GSB is committed to being a responsible corporate citizen and neighbor. Integral to GSB´s overall strategy is IT efficiency and security. The family-owned-andmanaged bank with $850 million in assets is known for investing in technology while maintaining a personal interest in customer service and satisfaction.

Technology Challenge
Like all banking institutions, GSB must comply with the regulations imposed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and other governmental entities. Information Security Officer Tom Lloyd says this entails adhering to strict rules governing access control, auditing and security, as well as yearly audits.

"Being a bank, we get audited by FDIC and state examiners yearly. Auditors want us to watch the logs, and with 50 servers, it´s impossible to manually watch and review each log and externalize the data," Lloyd said.

Solution Profile
GSB´s core requirements were for a system that could collect and archive audit and other security log entries from computers both inside and outside the corporate network. GSB needed a solution that was secure, robust and cost-effective. After comparing alternative applications in the market, such as HP OpenView, GSB found its preferred solution in TNT Software´s ELM Enterprise Manager, which delivers superior value and service. According to Lloyd, ELM Enterprise Manager has saved him and his team a considerable amount of time.

"We consolidate important security information and create reports to prepare for audits. It´s basically turned what could be a full-time job into a weekly half-day review of security logs," Lloyd said.

There are additional productivity gains for GSB as well. "Now we notice problems immediately,"Lloyd said. "We can do our normal jobs and have ELM watch things in the background and let us know where there is a problem, or when a problem is about to happen."

GSB found other time-saving uses for ELM Enterprise Manager. In addition to consolidating event logs and preparing audit reports, GSB uses ELM Enterprise Manager for other tasks:

- Notification of virus outbreaks. GSB uses Norton Antivirus for outside-facing systems. Firewall restrictions prevent Norton´s internal notification features from being used. Because ELM operates over a single, secure socket, GSB can use it to forward messages from Norton Antivirus to system administrators.

Health and performance monitoring.
GSB has configured several performance alarms that monitor disk space consumption, CPU utilization and its computers running Microsoft SQL Server, as well as the availability and quality of service for its public Web site. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based phone system monitoring. ELM immediately notifies GSB administrators when there is a phone system problem so that corrective action can be taken immediately.

Connectivity with "hot" site.
GSB uses ELM to verify status of a redundant T1 connection to its disaster recovery hot site.

"It´s amazing, ELM has definitely made my life easier,"Lloyd said. "Before ELM, our support team used processes that were manual and reactive. In the past, we had to physically inspect the audit logs on many of our Windows systems. These systems are isolated outside the corporate network in a DMZ, and due to firewall restrictions, we weren´t able to use traditional Windows tools from our desktops. Now, ELM automates these functions securely in our DMZ"