Academic Health System
Academic Health System
Following a hospital acquisition, a large health system inherited SonicWall firewall infrastructure with no internal expertise to manage it. White Oak Solutions provided staff augmentation, conducted a full security assessment, remediated configuration gaps, and assumed ongoing management of the environment through the hardware refresh cycle — leaving the organization with a hardened, well-documented infrastructure and a flexible support model built for the transition ahead.
Challenge
Following the acquisition of a regional medical facility, the health system inherited SonicWall firewall infrastructure that sat entirely outside its standardized technology stack. With no internal staffing or SonicWall expertise to manage the environment, the organization faced immediate operational and security risk. Configuration gaps and potential policy deviations were unknown, raising concerns about segmentation, least privilege, and defense-in-depth controls across a regulated environment. The risk of misconfigured or legacy firewall rules creating exploitable vulnerabilities made a structured, expert-led response essential.
Solution
White Oak stepped in as the organization's SonicWall resource from day one, providing the specialized expertise the internal team lacked. A comprehensive security and configuration assessment was conducted, producing current-state documentation across topology, security services, and policy configuration. A detailed gap analysis and prioritized findings report followed, with staged remediation applied in a controlled manner with post-change validation. White Oak then assumed ongoing management of the inherited environment and established a professional services retainer to provide flexible, ad hoc firewall and network support through the full hardware standardization cycle.
Results
Misconfigurations were identified and remediated through a structured, staged process, significantly strengthening the organization's security posture and reducing risk across the inherited environment. Visibility into firewall architecture and policy configuration improved substantially, giving the IT team a clear picture of what they had inherited. TLS Interception readiness was established with defined PKI guidance, enabling a path forward for DPI-SSL implementation. The retainer-based support model ensured the organization had access to specialized expertise on demand through the hardware refresh cycle, without the cost or complexity of a full-time hire.