My son-in-law is a partner in two doctor family medical practice in a small rural Alabama town

[G+_William Burlingame]

My son-in-law is a partner in two doctor family medical practice in a small rural Alabama town. Their previous IT consultant had them buy a Sonic firewall unit. The unit came with a two year “subscription” that has since expired. They hired a new consultant and he was concerned that the “subscription” was no longer up to date. I don’t understand why there would be a charge for updates. It doesn’t seem to me that firewalls have the same problems that antivirus programs have. If an update for a firewall is needed, I assume they have a bug in their firmware. Bugs shouldn’t require a fee to correct. My question is, is it a catastrophic problem if they don’t keep the firewall subscription up to date?

[G+_Taylor Graham]

Sonicwalls are actually pretty nice, and their subscription plan is called TotalSecure. Updates mean more than bug fixes. It includes patches for future vulnerabilities, firmware updates, etc. The plan also includes 24/7 support and next day replacement and such. Cisco is doing the same things. A lot of hardware vendors do. He doesn't NEED total secure, but if he has a problem and doesnt have it, he's on his own. I wouldnt recomend anyone go without it if uptime and security are critical.

[G+_Black Merc]

Dr. Offices = fed. reg. Require the max security measures so best thing is to keep the updates going, or isolate records from the net

[G+_Keith Mallett]

Taylor Graham is correct. Black Merc is also correct.

Don't skimp on the security. Get a price to renew the Sonicall; however, get competitive pricing from Sophos. Most of the Sophos firewall staff came from Sonicwall when Dell bought them. I'm an IT consultant and I sell both.

 

Great question William Burlingame

[G+_William Burlingame]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not an enterprise person, but since Padre is, I was hoping to get some responses from this group. I've forwarded the responses to the office manager and she said they were very helpful. Thanks again.

[G+_Jogi Vyas]

Mr Burlington,

 

Last year Leo responded to the similar question in his show 1195. Please click on the link https://twit.tv/shows/twit-bits/episodes/1260 . My suggestion is to have Asus router which will save you money in the long run. It runs on open source router operating system called: DDWRT. As my previous experience taught me that SonicWall is an expensive router, and it is hard to to maintain, besides it being subscription base. I used it when I was working as a IT/ Radiology Tech / Medical assistant with a small group of physicians in LA. I ran into some problems at that time. I haven't bought Asus router for personal use yet, but have been supporting it within my physician clients who own it. I also have heard very good things about it in the tech communities. By buying an Asus router you will be also helping open source community .

 

 

Sonic uses subscription base model which I don't like. As long as your local networks is concerned you do not need any special for a anti virus software either. I use Windows security essential. Security Essentials is a free software that does not require any subscription, and it is from Microsoft. Please click http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security-essentials-all-versions for more information.

 

I religiously used DDWRT and Security Essentials combo with my physicians offices. There are no other HIPPA regulations related to security that you should be using. I know patients' security is very crucial , but at the same time if someone can break into Target store or other big online retailers they can easily break into one that is owned by a small group of physicians, easily.

 

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact me directly if you should have any questions.