Julian W.-Senior IT Infrastructure, Network & Security Consultant

As part of this project, the existing active network infrastructure was modernized and made fit for the future. The goal was to introduce a powerful, secure and scalable network and WLAN infrastructure, including a Network Access Control (NAC) solution to improve network security and centralized access control.

At the beginning of the project, a comprehensive requirements analysis was carried out, taking into account the technical, operational and security-related requirements of the hospital sites. On this basis, a technical tender was prepared for new switches, WLAN access points and the NAC solution.

The successful implementation of the project established a modern, standardized and secure network infrastructure that meets the growing requirements for availability, mobility and IT security in hospital operations.

Activities:

• Supporting the tender process, including technical evaluation of offers and bidder evaluation
• Leading and managing the entire project implementation
• Coordinating the project process with internal stakeholders, business units and hospital IT
• Managing external service providers during the implementation and installation of the systems
• Monitoring the implementation, including quality control, project acceptance and defect management
• Coordinating and managing communication between hospital IT and external service providers as part of the NAC implementation
• Managing escalations in the event of technical and organizational challenges
• Ongoing budget monitoring and control of project expenses and additional costs
• Preparing decision papers for management on project changes, additional services and risks

As part of this project, a multi-level firewall architecture was designed and implemented for the data center in order to sustainably strengthen the security requirements of modern hospital and corporate infrastructures. The goal was to establish a comprehensive security concept based on BSI Grundschutz and the Defense-in-Depth principle for segmenting and securing critical network areas.

At the beginning of the project, a comprehensive firewall and security concept was prepared, including the definition of security zones, communication paths and segmentation requirements. The required feature sets, such as application control, IDS/IPS, VPN, high availability, logging and central management and monitoring functions, were developed and evaluated.

During the further course of the project, various firewall vendors and solution approaches were evaluated according to technical, operational and economic criteria. Support was also provided in preparing the technical tender documents and evaluating providers.

Activities:

• Requirements analysis and conceptual design
• Evaluation of the systems available on the market
• Supporting the preparation of the tender documents
• Planning and managing the implementation of the new firewall infrastructure
• Migrating existing legacy systems to the new security architecture
• Coordinating and managing external service providers and implementation partners
• Preparing technical operational and migration documentation
• Supporting commissioning and operational stabilization

As part of this project, a standardized and homogeneous network infrastructure was designed and implemented for various hospital sites. The goal was to standardize the existing switching environment in order to improve stability, scalability, security and operational management within the site networks.

A key part of the project was preparing a cross-site Layer-2 switching design that took technical, operational and high-availability requirements into account. Based on the criticality of each site and its individual infrastructure requirements, suitable switch vendors and hardware models were selected.

For particularly critical facilities, especially acute care hospitals and central data center sites (ZRS), a redundant Layer-2 switching infrastructure was designed and implemented to ensure highly available network connectivity.

Activities:

• Designing the L2 switching architecture
• Defining standardized switch configurations
• Planning and preparing switch migrations at the hospital sites
• Schedule management and coordination of migration windows
• Managing and coordinating external service providers during the implementation phase
• Defining monitoring and operational requirements
• Preparing technical documentation and operational documents
• Conducting the hyper-care phase to stabilize operations after the migration

Activities:

• Supporting customer projects in the areas of networking and IT security
• Designing and implementing corporate networks
• Designing and implementing network security architectures (firewalls, NAC, monitoring)
• Managing network rollout projects (firewalls, switches)
• Developing IT security processes
• IT security consulting

As part of this project, a centralized IT infrastructure was planned, designed and implemented for a total of 75 hospital locations. The goal was to create a highly available, secure and scalable network architecture for the standardized connection of all locations to the central data center.

The focus was on developing a future-proof network and security concept, including the evaluation and execution of a Proof of Concept (PoC) for modern firewall systems. The primary connection of the locations was provided via wired WAN connections with automated failover to LTE-based backup connections to ensure high availability.

The project also included designing the entire network topology, including selecting and implementing dynamic routing protocols for efficient and resilient traffic management between the locations and the data center.

Activities:

• Developing a connectivity concept
• Selecting and evaluating the appropriate hardware components
• Conducting a PoC
• Planning and managing the hardware rollout at all hospital locations
• Coordinating service providers and internal stakeholders
• Managing schedules and coordinating migration windows for connecting the locations
• Technically managing the implementation
• Conducting the hyper-care phase after commissioning to ensure stable operations and fast incident management
• Documentation

• Technical support for day-to-day IT operations and customer projects.