CASE STUDY
BECAUSE THERE WAS NO NEED FOR
ANY PHYSICAL APPLIANCES, WE
COULD MAXIMISE THE UTILISATION OF
OUR EXISTING SERVERS BY RUNNING
ARUBA CLEARPASS VMS.
research, narrowed its search down to two
candidates – one of them was Aruba.
“In addition to security which was the prime
requirement, the solution needed to be
flexible enough to work in a multi-vendor
environment, and scalable enough to be
deployed across our 12 large branches
without adding complexity or management
overheads,” said Almarzooqi.
The proof is in the POC
Set up in 2006 by the Abu Dhabi
Government in collaboration with
Munich Re, Daman is now the leading
specialist health insurer in the region serving
nearly three million customers.
As a semi-government entity
headquartered in the UAE, it was
imperative for Daman to comply with
a new electronic security governmental
standard for information security. Omar
Almarzooqi, Manager, IT Security and
Networks at Daman, and his team knew
that implementing a Network Access
Control (NAC) solution in their environment
would be essential to ensure successful
compliance with the new regulation.
Besides the implications of complying with
the new electronic security regulation, the
absence of an NAC presented both security
and administrative concerns. While previous
wireless solutions worked conveniently, they
presented their own concerns and risks which
required a more comprehensive solution.
In addition to the complexities involving a
wireless network, the challenge was even
greater on the wired network. “The previous
wired network access controls were not
robust enough to meet today’s challenges.
With so many locations, all frequented by
numerous contractors and customers, the
risks we had to look into were considerable
and wide-reaching,” said Almarzooqi.
Flexibility, scalability and openness
take precedence
Recognising these risks, Daman began
evaluating access control solutions from five
market-leading vendors and after careful
Each vendor was given an entire floor
at Daman’s headquarters to execute a
POC within the company’s production
environment. These were then scored
on the basis of technical, support and
commercial criteria.
“Aruba completed the implementation in
under a week which we found extremely
impressive given the complexity of our IT
environment,” said Almarzooqi.
Aruba’s solution was more easily integrated
and performed better than that provided
by the competing vendor who had the
experience of working on Daman’s network
solutions previously.
Immediate cost savings
The insurance provider deployed two
Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager 5K virtual
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