Firewall Assessment & Managed Transition for a Health System Acquisition

Following the acquisition of a regional medical facility, a large health system inherited firewall infrastructure outside its standardized environment, with no internal expertise to manage it. White Oak Solutions was engaged to assess the inherited environment, remediate configuration gaps, and provide ongoing management through the hardware refresh cycle.

The acquisition introduced inherited firewall infrastructure outside the organization's standardized environment, with no internal staffing or expertise available to manage it. Configuration gaps and potential deviations from security best practices across the inherited environment were unknown, creating meaningful risk exposure in a HIPAA-regulated setting. Existing policies required validation to ensure proper segmentation, least privilege, and defense-in-depth controls were enforced, while misconfigured or legacy rules risked creating exploitable vulnerabilities.

White Oak Solutions provided staff augmentation to fill the immediate expertise gap created by the acquisition, stepping in as the organization's firewall resource from day one. A comprehensive security and configuration assessment was conducted, producing current-state documentation covering topology, security services, and policy configuration. A detailed gap analysis and prioritized findings report was delivered, followed by staged remediation with go-live support to apply recommended configuration changes in a controlled manner. White Oak then assumed ongoing management of the inherited environment during the transition period and established a professional services hours block for continued, flexible firewall and network support.

A more secure, well-documented firewall environment managed through a structured transition, with a flexible support model that extended internal IT capacity through the hardware refresh cycle. Immediate expertise was provided to manage inherited infrastructure from the first day post-acquisition, validated controls and remediated misconfigurations significantly reduced risk across the environment, defined PKI guidance enabled a clear path forward for DPI-SSL implementation, and a retainer-based structure extended internal IT capacity through the full hardware refresh cycle.