Case StudyJohns Hopkins MedicalInstitution Improves
Network Healthwith Gigamon
Deep Observability

Challenges• Insufficient number of network taps is a significant
challenge for security and network monitoring

Regarding service and support, I can’t
really comment about Gigamon because
I don’t think we’ve ever needed to callthem. The Gigamon solution’s been up
nonstop for two and a half years.
ALAN SHACKELFORD
Senior Software Systems Engineer,Johns Hopkins Medical Institution• Difficulty with sharing network traffic among its
various IT groups

Customer Benefits• Multiple ports for network and security groups acrossthe organization• Feeds can be configured and customized to view
specific traffic• Improved performance of firewall tools withtailored feedsSolution• GigaVUE® HC Series• GigaVUE-FM• GigaSMART• GigaVUE TA Series• Gigamon G-TAP®

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CASE STUDY | JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL INSTITUTION

About Customer
Johns Hopkins Medical Institution features hospitalmanagement, healthcare consulting and clinicaleducation services through strategic alliances andaffiliations in North America, Latin America, Europe, theMiddle East, and Asia. Johns Hopkins Medicine operates
six academic and community hospitals, four suburban
healthcare and surgery centers, and more than 30
primary healthcare outpatient sites, and the organization
has more than 2.6 million outpatient encounters.

Crucial Network Monitoring andSecurity Needs
Johns Hopkins Medical Institution’s network supports
such mission-critical applications as medical record
management, patient order entry, thousands ofwebsites, and university and hospital email. Monitoring,troubleshooting, and security are crucial elements formanaging these applications. Johns Hopkins MedicalInstitution was struggling with dozens of network
taps gathering information for these purposes acrossits network.
According to Alan Shackelford, Senior Software
Systems Engineer for the organization, several groups
needed access to the traffic captured by these taps
for their own purposes and ports were prime realestate. “We were unplugging taps when another groupneeded the ports for monitoring,” he said. “We wereliterally fighting over available ports. It was standing
room only.” In addition, each group needed different
information, so feeds were being configured andreconfigured over and over again.
Because Johns Hopkins Medical Institution is auniversity and a medical institution, reliability is a
critical necessity. “Network changes are seldom madeand when they are, they’re done carefully because,on the hospital side, it’s a matter of life and death if a
mistake is made,” said Shackelford. “When we look at
new purchases, primary consideration is put on uptime,reliability and the least exposure to risk.”
All the right qualities for a healthcare network Johns
Hopkins Medical Institution was cautious in its searchfor network visibility tools. However, the choice soonbecame clear when only one could meet all of theorganization’s requirements: Gigamon.

© 2024 Gigamon. All rights reserved.

“We selected Gigamon for a great number of reasons,”
said Shackelford. “First, we chose its solution for thenumber of taps you can create; second, because of
the sheer tonnage of traffic we needed it to support;
and finally, it allows us to go port by port and separate
out what we want to watch and configure the feeds
accordingly. Gigamon keeps the signal to noise ratio
manageable and we can tailor the feed to fit our needs.”
Gigamon has supplied Johns Hopkins MedicalInstitution with GigaVUE-FM mid-density Visibility
Fabric nodes for 10Gb networks. These devices filter
and replicate traffic flows across the organization’s
security and monitoring tools, including its Intrusion
Detection System (IDS). Each group is able to configure
its own feed to extract the traffic needed based onwhat the group is watching for in the traffic stream.
In addition, the modular design of the Gigamon solution
allows Johns Hopkins Medical Institution’s different
groups to utilize the exact number of ports necessaryto fit their requirements. The base chassis houses eight
10Gb ports and four 1Gb ports and scales to a maximumof 24 10Gb ports. Furthermore, multiple GigaVUE-FM
fabric nodes can be stacked together into a bigger
virtual Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline of over 200ports, running in a leader/member or star configuration.

Security and Monitoring Benefits
The Gigamon solution physically spans two locations, andJohns Hopkins Medical Institution will eventually offer its
satellite sites the same monitoring and security benefits
that the sites physically connected to the network areenjoying. “One thing you have to appreciate with Gigamonis the ability to pop a tap anytime you need one,” said
Shackelford. “I’m camped on a port and it would havebeen quite a luxury in the past to have my own, but today,
I’m not taking up a port someone else needs.”
The GigaVUE-FM fabric node enables secure accessand complete network visibility, as well as providing
aggregation and filtering of incoming 10Gb traffic andensuring that relevant traffic is sent to lower speed 1Gb
monitoring interfaces. The solution allows continuousmonitoring, which, according to Shackelford, justwasn’t happening before. “The monitoring being doneby the network security tools and firewall is much
improved because of the tailored feed and makes
sense out of something that was once hodgepodge.”

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CASE STUDY | JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL INSTITUTION

Gigamon gives Johns Hopkins Medical Institution theability to put the solution where it needs it—inline orout-of-band.
“Our Gigamon solution is off to the side, it’s not partof the circuit, so the traffic into the proxy servers canbe looked at through the GigaVUE-FM nodes,” said
Shackelford. This flexibility allows the organization tomove the Gigamon solution around as needs change.

Service and Support

About Gigamon
Gigamon® offers a deep observability pipeline that
efficiently delivers network-derived intelligence tocloud, security, and observability tools. This helps
eliminate security blind spots and reduce tool costs,
enabling you to better secure and manage yourhybrid cloud infrastructure. Gigamon has served
more than 4,000 customers worldwide, including
over 80 percent of Fortune 100 enterprises, 9 of the10 largest mobile network providers, and hundreds ofgovernments and educational organizations. To learn
more, please visit gigamon.com.

“Regarding service and support, I can’t really comment
about Gigamon because I don’t think we’ve everneeded to call them,” said Shackelford. “The Gigamon
solution’s been up nonstop for two and a half years.
If there’d ever been an issue, I’d have heard about it.
As far as BAI Federal, our integrator, we’ve always hadgreat service from them, never had to wait. It’s not
unusual for us to look up and there they are just hours
after a call from us. We have no complaints at all there.”
When asked about his overall thoughts on thesolution, Shackelford said, “I think the most important
thing about Gigamon is its configurability and thecustomization you can do to the feed. You don’t haveto take a white noise feed; you can pare it down andthe app you’re feeding it into can take extra time
to do a proper job, so it gives you another layer ofconfiguring until you get to your final destination. Thatand the sheer number of ports you get and the traffic
it can support is just not available anywhere else. TheGigamon solution was money well spent.”

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