Management

Review: The Opengear Infrastructure Manager Ensures Smooth Sailing in Healthcare

This secure and reliable infrastructure management solution is well suited for healthcare’s high data volume.

Carlos Soto is an award-winning reviewer and journalist with 20 years of experience covering technology and business.

Data is a key component of healthcare, and organizations are flush with it. Even seemingly simple medical devices can generate a lot of important information about a patient. Data management issues are even more intricate today with some employees working remotely and the use of virtual care services, which can complicate management and open new attack vectors.

But it’s far from a hopeless situation. One step in the right direction would be to implement solutions like the Opengear Infrastructure Manager, which is designed to keep data both protected and smoothly flowing where it needs to go.

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Streamline Network, Server and Power Infrastructure Information

Next-generation infrastructure management solutions like the Opengear Infrastructure Manager offer features needed to streamline network, server and power infrastructure information, especially in data centers or remote environments, such as offsite clinics.

Smart out-of-band (OOB) management with failover to cellular networks in emergencies empowers IT administrators to monitor and remediate threats from anywhere and at any time.

It was a treat to test one of the device’s main capabilities: the intelligent OOB management. The OOB feature helps hospitals maintain data continuity by putting some or all activity outside of a specific telecommunications frequency band. Using Opengear’s Smart Out of Band feature, hospitals benefit from physical connections to network devices managed via a secure remote link. This reduces IT reliance on power cycling, third-party remote management and many other standard but sometimes unwieldy processes.

Coupled with Lighthouse 5 management software, which streamlines network configuration and rulesets, the OOB feature enables the entire suite to be managed from a centralized portal. It’s also suitable for the high-performance computing applications often found in medical research.

An Adaptable Infrastructure Manager Good for Continuous Operations

The Opengear Infrastructure Manager comes with a 48-port serial console server but is also available in 16-port models with USB 2.0 console ports and 16-port versions with a 24 port gigabit Ethernet switch for larger installations.

Each Opengear device also boasts a dual network connection capability with built-in fiber and small form-factor pluggable (SFP) capabilities for hot-swappable interfaces. The SFP ports on the Opengear device enable the switch to connect to fiber or Ethernet cables regardless of any differences in cable types or speeds. Optionally, it can also roll over to a 4G LTE cellular network in emergencies, making it a good choice for continuous operations.

Manage Healthcare Data Centers through One Location

Another impressive feature I found during testing is the ability to centralize the management of all enterprise data centers and remote sites through the Lighthouse application.

The Lighthouse software manages a network’s devices via connected console servers at each location. As an API-driven platform with an HTML5 interface, it provides secure access to remote networks despite the connection layout or how a user interacts with the system.

In combination with NetOps console servers, Lighthouse can facilitate the management of Docker containers to each remote location, adding yet another layer of functionality and automation.

The Opengear Infrastructure Manager is a perfect tool for helping to maintain and protect healthcare data in an increasingly dangerous world. The fact that it can do all that without a single point of failure makes it a valuable tool when lives may be on the line.

SPECIFICATIONS

MODULES AND CONNECTORS: Dual LAN ports available by selecting two from four available ports
SERIAL PORTS: RJ45, RS-232
USB: Two USB 2.0 host ports
CPU: 1GHz ARM SoC Marvell 88F6283
SDRAM: 256MB
EMBEDDED NOR FLASH: 64MB
INTERNAL FLASH: 16GB

Effective Data Management with Opengear Infrastructure Manager

Security and audits make the world turn in data management, especially in healthcare, where sensitive and protected data is everywhere. Still, secure solutions are not always limited to single cybersecurity features such as encryption and anomaly detection.

Solutions such as the Opengear Infrastructure Manager deliver security for healthcare settings by offering failover to cellular capabilities. Combined with out-of-band access, centralized management of all enterprise data centers and remote sites with a single, secure application like Lighthouse 5 makes this a great choice for any healthcare organization, from a huge urban facility to an affiliated rural clinic on the network edge.

Zero-touch provisioning automation over the network, and without manual user interaction, also relieves staff of repetitive tasks such as configuring devices, adding new features and updating firmware. Not only does this drive security by reducing human error but it also saves time while lowering costs.

Each Opengear Infrastructure Manager also lets you lock down ports per user and group and provides enterprise-grade security along with data encryption up to Federal Information Processing Standards 140-2 standards.

In healthcare environments, just as with financial services, audit and compliance checks are two huge responsibilities for IT teams. The Opengear Infrastructure Manager facilitates both activities by offering audit trail logging in 16-gigabyte increments on local storage. More important, in healthcare, where these audit data points may include images or larger files, the Opengear Infrastructure Manager can expand by leveraging SD cards.