Praetor Success Story

From its humble beginnings in 1911, the Moses Cone Health System (MCHS) has established a reputation as one of the finest health care networks in the southeastern U.S. Comprised of four multi-disciplinary hospitals— The Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, Wesley Long Community Hospital, The Women’s Hospital of Greensboro, and the Moses Cone Behavioral Health Center—plus a health care center, two nursing homes, and numerous outpatient centers, Greensboro NC-based MCHS has become a center of medical learning and service employing more than 700 physicians and 6,200 health care professionals system-wide.

In many ways, Moses Cone Health System’s medical capabilities stack up with the best in the country. Yet on May 4, 2000, the System faced an infection it was helpless to battle, as the “I Love You” virus struck the network’s email infrastructure. Within minutes over 100,000 bogus email messages flooded through MCHS’ servers, shutting down essential communication channels to over 2,100 users and compromising the System’s ability to provide critical services.

Front-line responsibility for coping with the crisis fell on the shoulders of Tom Cheek, Technical Analyst in MCHS’ Information Systems division. Tom and nearly forty of his colleagues battled for more than 24 hours to “clean out” email servers and restore individual desktop computers at facilities across the System.

“The ‘I Love You’ virus was this organization’s worst technological nightmare,” said Cheek.  “Our director of IT ordered us to find a solution that would prevent anything like it from happening in the future.”

Cheek subsequently began looking for a robust, comprehensive firewall solution that would not only stop viruses like “I Love You,” but would filter all kinds of objectionable or destructive email from entering the MCHS Internet network.  He quickly found that there are problems associated with many so-called “fixes.”

“We use Microsoft Exchange as our email platform. Unfortunately, many anti-virus solutions are not optimized for Exchange. In fact, Microsoft warns against using some of the best-known solutions because they put a serious drag on the flow of incoming email.”

Cheek also learned that many solutions are expensive and difficult to configure. One email filtering application however, named Praetor, from Computer Mail Services, Inc. (CMS) in Southfield MI, proved to be the exception.

“Praetor is designed specifically for Microsoft Exchange Server. It’s affordable, easy to install, and includes twenty pre-set rules that enable enterprises to effectively quarantine email suspected of carrying viruses or unwanted spam,” Cheek said.

CMS’ Praetor goes far beyond the resident security capabilities of MS Exchange to block transmission of all kinds of commercial advertisements, viruses, even sensitive or confidential company information.  It installs as a Windows NT service, either on the organization’s Exchange Server or on a separate Windows NT workstation depending on message volume.

After gaining approval from management, Cheek downloaded Praetor for a free 21-day evaluation.  From the first, he was struck by the simplicity and effectiveness of the solution.

“I was surprised at the comprehensive rules that were pre-set in Praetor. Even though I had the capability to change, add, or delete rules for myself, the application covered everything I wanted to filter,” he said. “Once Praetor was up and running, I was shocked at the number of email messages it quarantined.  It’s amazing to see the volume of potentially harmful material coming into a network such as ours.”

While Praetor can filter both incoming and outgoing messages, Cheek and his associates chose to monitor only inbound traffic.  The firewall is set to detain any message containing an attachment with an .exe, .vba, or .vbs extension; work-related executable files are scanned and then sent on to recipients.  MS Word or Excel files are typically delivered without delay, as they are unlikely to carry any code that would be destructive to the system.

In surveying the advantages of the Praetor filtering solution, Cheek is perhaps most impressed by the speed at which the software operates.  “We see virtually no slowdown in transmission rates through our servers.  I’m sure that no one within MCHS even knows we have this level of protection installed,” he noted.

Since implementing Praetor in mid-2000, the Moses Cone Health System has not had a single occurrence of virus-related interruptions in service brought on by external email.  What’s more, Cheek says the level of technical support has been exceptional, especially during the one Praetor upgrade MCHS undertook. “Whenever I’ve needed it, CMS support personnel have been there for me.  The service has been great,” he said.

Cheek is convinced that his organization has found the proper solution against virus attacks. “When ‘I Love You’ hit, it was like a fire had engulfed us and there was no fire department.  It was an ‘all hands’ kind of emergency,” Cheek concluded.  “Today, the situation is totally different.  Our servers have the fortification they need to stay up and running. I’m sure as I can be that we’re protected, because Praetor is that good.”