Challenge: Aging firewalls and a difficult to access portal The MCC IT department recognized the fact that its firewalls no longer met the needs of its sophisticated testing environment. “We needed a security solution with improved application layer visibility,” said Eli Haiby, Senior Systems Administrator at the MCC. Additionally, MCC employees and committee members who work remotely from home offices and hospital environments were struggling with the SSL VPN portal. “Our users were experiencing access issues. People want to be able to use their tablets and iPads, but they were encountering connectivity issues depending on the device and browser they were using,” continued Haiby.

1. C AS E S TU D Y: M ED I C AL C O U N C I L OF C A N A DA
Medical Council of Canada
Streamlines Remote
Access Management for
Employees, Committee
Members and Physicians
Medical Council of Canada
Industry:
Not For Profit
Headquarters:
Ottawa, Canada
Users Accessing
the Remote
Access Portal:
300 employees,
committee members,
physicians, medical
students and universities
Yearly number
of medical
student and
graduate
assessments:
over 11,000
Website:
http://mcc.ca

2. C AS E S TU D Y: M ED I C AL C O U N C I L OF C A N A DA
Background
The Medical Council of Canada (MCC) strives to achieve the highest level of
medical care for Canadians through excellence in evaluation of physicians.
It assesses over 11,000 medical students and graduates every year through
its examinations. The MCC is also a leader in verifying and storing physician
credentials, which the candidate can share with medical organizations across
Canada.
The Canadian medical community relies on the MCC to administer
Objectives
examinations, provide results and verify and store physician credentials. The
physiciansapply.ca portal is a secure location where students and physicians
Provide a user friendly
can apply for examinations, view exam results, have credentials verified and
apply for medical registration.
solution for remote access
users, allowing secure
login from any device
Challenge: Aging firewalls and a difficult to access portal
The MCC IT department recognized the fact that its firewalls no longer
Improve application
met the needs of its sophisticated testing environment. “We needed a
security solution with improved application layer visibility,” said Eli Haiby,
layer visibility, line speed
Senior Systems Administrator at the MCC. Additionally, MCC employees and
routing and intrusion
committee members who work remotely from home offices and hospital
prevention
environments were struggling with the SSL VPN portal. “Our users were
experiencing access issues. People want to be able to use their tablets and
iPads, but they were encountering connectivity issues depending on the
Ability to securely publish
device and browser they were using,” continued Haiby.
MCC web applications
The MCC conducted in-depth research, which included speaking with leading
technology vendors and studying the Gartner Magic Quadrant firewalls and
remote access research reports. Upon narrowing down the playing field to two
potential solutions, the IT department built a list of requirements and invited
vendors and their partners to participate in a proof of concept (POC).
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3. C AS E S TU D Y: M ED I C AL C O U N C I L OF C A N A DA
Solution: Enhanced visibility, security and access control with
Palo Alto and F5
Solution
Scalar partnered with Palo Alto Networks and F5, proposing a solution
that combined application control and visibility with Palo Alto 3050 nextgeneration firewalls and unified access control with the F5 Access Policy
Palo Alto 3050 NextGeneration Firewalls
Manager (APM). Working with the MCC throughout the 6-month competitive
POC process, the Scalar professional services team provided ongoing
knowledge transfer in order to get the IT staff comfortable with the new
technology.
Unified access control with
F5 Access Policy Manager
“After the pilot, we went with Scalar
Ongoing knowledge
because they have a very bright
transfer throughout the
project
team of people who are experts in
this space. They actually took the
time to guide us and explained what
they were doing along the way,”
Upon completion of the POC, the project was awarded to Scalar. “After the
pilot, we went with Scalar because they have a very bright team of people
who are experts in this space,” said Haiby. “They actually took the time to
guide us and explained what they were doing along the way,” he continued.
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4. C AS E S TU D Y: M ED I C AL C O U N C I L OF C A N A DA
Project rollout: Testing makes perfect
Working closely with the MCC, Scalar mapped out deployment timelines and a
solid testing strategy. This first stage involved the set-up of the F5 APMs in a
testing environment. During this phase, the MCC was busy preparing end user
documentation and policy reviews, ensuring a smooth transition experience
for the employees, committee members, physicians and universities, who are
all users of the remote access portal. The team was then given a
“The remote access solution has
window of time overnight to stage a test deployment, identifying
and documenting every issue and fix, paving the way to a smooth
been an important upgrade to
our systems and has improved the
efficiency of our day-to-day work”
cutover. “During the night of the cutover, we got all of our IT
staff involved, going through each test scenario,” said Haiby. “I
am happy to say that we did not experience any downtime,” he
continued. In addition to the primary data centre, the MCC has
a disaster recovery site where a Palo Alto firewall was set-up to
replicate for essential services only.
Results: Drop in support calls, happy end users
The MCC experienced visibility improvements and performance gains. The IT
staff has a much better understanding of what is happening in the network
and is able to quickly detect malicious behavior. It is also noticing fewer
support calls and has experienced positive feedback from employees and
committee members. “We used to receive support calls from physicians and
employees who were unable to access the old SSL VPN because they were
logging in from a particular browser or device. Those calls have really tapered
off,” said Haiby. “We have seen marked improvements in the SharePoint
application and we can now publish MCC web applications securely within the
appliance,” he continued.
Positive feedback from users accessing the MCC’s web applications continues
to come in. “The remote access solution has been an important upgrade to
our systems and has improved the efficiency of our day-to-day work,” said
Tanya Rivard, Test Development Officer of the Evaluation Bureau.
For more information, please visit
http://www.scalar.ca
For the latest news, visit our blog at
http://blog.scalar.ca
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