Enloe thwarts a ransomware attack and speeds data restore by up to 99% with Veeam

Technology plays an essential role in modern healthcare delivery, and clinicians rely on a range of IT applications and devices to gather the information for accurate diagnoses and effective treatment plans. In a Level II trauma center such as Enloe Medical Center (Enloe), lives hang in the balance of rapid access to digital information.

“Our aim is to ensure that Enloe clinicians can focus completely on the patient,” said Eric Addington, Manager of Systems Infrastructure at Enloe Medical Center. “We don’t want our people to waste time waiting to access essential data or worrying whether patient information is secure. By taking care of all that in the background, we allow them to pay attention to what really matters.”

Enloe’s pursuit of excellence isn’t limited to its clinical care — the hospital’s IT team is also always looking for ways to improve. The team identified data protection as a pain point, as its previous approach consumed valuable resources.

“We consider backups the last, crucial stop in our data security strategy,” said Addington. “They represent the final layer of protection if our systems are compromised or corrupted. That makes them a priority. However, we found that our previous data protection tool required constant babysitting, and even then we weren’t confident that our environment was 100% backed up. It also didn’t allow us to test our ability to restore data in the event of a disaster. It was time for a change.”

To ensure clinicians can always access the data they need to provide exceptional patient care, Enloe chose Veeam. The hospital’s IT team was won over by a range of factors.

“We considered solutions from a range of reputable data protection vendors,” said Addington. “Veeam was the clear standout. In our assessment, the Veeam solution ranked highest on reliability and ease of management. We were in the process of virtualizing our environment at the time, and Veeam is simply the best option for protecting virtual servers.”

Working with Dasher Technologies, a Converge company, and Veeam engineers, Enloe rolled out its new data protection solution with minimal disruption. The hospital now uses Veeam to back up a complex array of virtual and physical servers, which hosts approximately 150 applications. Using Veeam, Enloe does a monthly test restore of all data.

“We use Veeam to take daily snapshots of all our servers, with 15 incremental backups of our transactional systems each day,” said Addington. “We store one of those backups on-site and another at our off-site data center. At least once a week, we copy backups to tape and more often for our critical servers. Our current backup policy wouldn’t be possible without Veeam. And best of all, we can run a test restore whenever we want, giving us peace of mind that we know exactly what recovery will look like in the event of a disaster.”

Building on its success with Veeam, Enloe decided to deploy Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365. Employees throughout the hospital depend on Outlook for email and calendar capabilities, while back-office staff rely on Teams and SharePoint for everyday collaboration.

“As soon as we purchased Microsoft 365 licenses, we turned to Veeam to protect the environment,” said Addington. “We looked at other providers, but Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 ties in perfectly with our current approach to data protection because of it offers easy integration and straightforward management, so it was the natural choice.”

Enloe is now exploring backing up data to the cloud using Veeam. The hospital is also considering a future without tape backups.

“The next step for us might be backing up Microsoft 365 to Microsoft Azure,” said Addington. “We’re also considering AWS. The beauty of Veeam is we know that it will work seamlessly with either. And Veeam immutable backups offer an appealing alternative to tapes, which would mean less manual effort and risk. With Veeam, we’re achieving our goal of empowering our healthcare professionals to deliver the patient-centered care that sets Enloe apart.”

“Today’s technology world is plagued with bad-actors who relentlessly target healthcare organizations and their data,” said Christopher Webb, Director, IT Infrastructure and Service Operations at Enloe Medical Center. “Gone are the days of only worrying about accidental file deletion or corruption. Preparing and defending against these evil-doers is a must – the Veeam solution has enabled us to do precisely that.”

Cut data restore times by as much as 99%, contributing to greater employee productivity.
“We get at least two requests a week to restore files or emails that were accidentally deleted,” said Addington. “With Veeam, we can respond in as little as an hour rather than the two weeks it could take before.”

Saved 20 hours per week on backup administration, boosting operational efficiency.
By redeploying resources previously dedicated to managing backups, Enloe’s IT team can work more effectively. The hospital has also reduced risk since backup expertise is no longer confined to a few staff members.

Avoided paying a ransom by recovering data with Veeam.
“By investing in better data protection with Veeam, we were prepared when we experienced a cyber incident,” said Addington. “Within 48 hours, we had 25% of our critical systems back online, which rose to 75% in 96 hours and 95% in two weeks. Thanks to Veeam, we responded and recovered efficiently and expertly, allowing our hospital operations to continue providing excellent patient care.