Managed IT and EDR Security

St. Ann’s Community is a not-for-profit, long-term care setting serving about 1,200 seniors a year in the Rochester, NY region. They deliver a complete continuum of quality care for older adults, offering everything from independent living to adult day care to 24-hour skilled nursing. St. Ann’s utilizes technology to empower the nursing staff, food services staff, housekeeping, and all other team members who work bedside with efficient tools to best serve residents. Additionally, IT services supports 900 staff members in business aspects such as administration, human resources, marketing, and finance.

The Business Challenge:

Much like a hospital, St. Ann’s Community is a 24/7/365 organization. The organization’s two biggest focuses are to be always on and always being available. Families of loved ones at St. Ann’s need to feel a sense of connection, especially with COVID situations, and have trust that their loved ones are receiving the best care possible.

With the rise of COVID, St. Ann’s saw a dramatic increase in depression. Family couldn’t visit in person, but those family bonds needed to be maintained for the health of the resident. St. Ann’s experimented with technology, including social apps for remote communication. The organization discovered that some tech worked great, but many options tested were clunky and cumbersome and not particularly easy to navigate for older adults. At one point, St. Ann’s acquired 40 tablets with Zoom licenses. Residents could sign out a tablet to connect with a family member, but many seniors had difficulty holding a tablet upright, requiring staff members to assist. Trying to keep family ties strong became a worrying ordeal, both for residents and staff, as the extra hours that staff were clocking to assist the residents created issues with employees’ work/life balance.

Furthermore, all these new tools had to be protected, kept secure, and be in adherence to the regulations of healthcare and healthcare information. St. Ann’s infrastructure, security, and applications teams had to perform the same types of actions along with creating real-time, redundant systems for their hardware, software, and networks. This amounted to trying to incorporate new technology into an industry that’s typically 15 years behind the times.

For many residents, technology is not something they really understand, and they don’t have the patience or know-how to give new tech a good try. A big question became, how do St. Ann’s staff members teach and train seniors while keeping up on new tech themselves, in addition to performing all their other duties, so no resident is left unsupported?

Lastly, with St. Ann’s being a not-for-profit organization, how do they afford all these new and different solutions? St. Ann’s collects Medicare and Medicaid once a month, and it receives some funds for end-of-life support, but how does it afford to pay for technology at the same price as for-profit companies?

The Solution:

Managed Services
Mainline created customized Managed Services solutions to fit St. Ann’s specific needs. Existing vendors and technology tools were consolidated to eliminate overlaps. For instance, St. Ann’s Community was running two antivirus/antimalware applications, causing inefficiencies. Mainline established one secure application to cover the entire network. Managed Services also included easy-to-use technology for residents to connect remotely with their families.

Fortinet Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
With St. Ann’s only having one permanent cybersecurity full-time position, Mainline implemented Fortinet EDR for 24/7/365 security monitoring with automatic remediation of security threats. Managed EDR incorporates three main tools for endpoint protection and security – endpoint data collection, automated incidence response, and analysis.

Endpoint data collection monitors all endpoints and collects data on the endpoint itself, what’s connected to the endpoint, and the data transferred to and from the endpoint for optimal threat detection. Automated incidence response identifies that an incident has occurred, determines the threat, and issues an automatic response. Analysis further examines the nature of the threat and how the attack was executed. Other Fortinet EDR security solutions contain and eliminate the threat, then create a detailed report for IT.

The Result:

Mainline Managed Services delivered results almost immediately, allowing St. Ann’s Community to be proactive instead of reactive. All tools now complemented each other. Where St. Ann’s previously had to track expenditures singularly across 50 hardware and software vendors, Mainline brought that down to one pane of glass. Where employees had to log into four systems, it became just one system to see the whole picture.

The entire ecosystem at St. Ann’s is now configured properly, with EDR alerting the proper personnel to the right threats to business. Managed services remediate issues right away, then communicates any additional steps that need to be taken directly to staff. As Aaron Fields, St. Ann’s Chief Information Officer, explains, “we’re not waking up Sunday at 3:00 am anymore trying to figure out what’s broken.” The ROI on this alone has accounted for time savings upwards of 20 hours a month, giving more time back to staff for providing care to their elderly patients.

Residents are also enjoying easier-to-use communications tools to spend more time conversing with family, helping to lower the depression levels from the pandemic and get back to a more normal way of life.

“In a world where there are lots of options for your business challenges,” Fields says, “Mainline has taken a consultative approach to understand the “why” of what needs to happen instead of just selling a product and getting me a quote. I think their approach is a lot different from how a lot of other IT service companies unfortunately operate.”