How the Thuir Hospital Centre gained peace of mind with the PROVE IT administration bastion ?

A public mental health institution with 470 beds and places, the Thuir Hospital Centre wanted to secure the remote maintenance operations carried out by its third-party providers.

Nearly a decade ago, it adopted the PROVE IT PAM solution from French vendor Rubycat. Franck Michelier, Networks, Telecoms and Security Administrator within the Digital Services Directorate, shares his experience of the solution.

In what context did you opt for PROVE IT ?

We already had a firewall system that provided us with some information on connections made during remote maintenance operations, but this felt insufficient. We knew, for example, the date and time of connections, but had no visibility into the actions carried out.

After considering several bastions available on the market, we chose PROVE IT for its ease of deployment and integration into our infrastructure. It is also a French solution, which was an important consideration for us. We were also familiar with Rubycat's reputation.

Implementing a first PROVE IT PAM solution confirmed us in this choice, and a few years later, when we obtained HDS (Health Data Hosting) certification, we deployed a second dedicated PROVE IT bastion for that scope.

What benefits does PROVE IT offer to the Digital Services Directorate teams ?

Above all, we have gained peace of mind. We now have detailed visual traceability of all actions carried out by the 25 providers working on the Thuir Hospital Centre's information system, as well as the ten or so providers involved with HDS infrastructures.

Everything is recorded.

We can therefore easily retrieve this history to identify problematic actions and, where necessary, clarify the chain of responsibility. This is particularly critical on the HDS side, which imposes very strict traceability and security requirements.

How has this solution been received by the Thuir Hospital Centre's providers ?

At the time of the first deployment nearly ten years ago, PAM (Privileged Access Management) systems were not yet commonplace. We therefore had to raise awareness and support our providers, whose security processes had become slightly more complex, as the requirements for connecting to our infrastructure had become more demanding. But once that stage was passed, their access to the necessary resources became simpler and faster, which facilitated adoption of the administration bastion.

Today, PROVE IT is very well accepted.

A word, perhaps, on the support provided by Rubycat ?

We see its quality every day, a reliable, regularly updated product, teams that are easy to reach and responsive, and technical developments that take user feedback into account. A few years ago, we ourselves requested an additional feature and were heard straight away. Rubycat also goes to great lengths to ensure PROVE IT's interoperability with third-party systems, which is rare enough to be worth highlighting. We are therefore very satisfied with this collaboration !

Testimonial collected on 14 March 2024