Case Study: Evanglisches Diakoniekrankenhaus Freiburg achieves simplified, ransomware‑resilient network and email security with Barracuda Networks

Simplifying network and email security for a leading German hospital

Evanglisches Diakoniekrankenhaus Freiburg is a mid-sized, 175‑bed German hospital (with gerontopsychiatry and youth rehabilitation facilities) facing the common healthcare security challenges of legacy medical devices, a large multi‑DMZ network, open patient Wi‑Fi and frequent email‑borne threats like phishing and ransomware. IT leadership needed secure vendor access to medical assets and stronger protection against inbound attacks without disrupting patient care.

Working with managed‑services partner abtis, the hospital deployed a Barracuda CloudGen Firewall (high‑availability F400 cluster) and an on‑premises Barracuda Email Security Gateway. The combined solution stopped malicious email and network threats, blocked phishing and spoofing, tightened application and packet inspection, protected vulnerable devices, reduced spam, and dramatically cut IT administration time—freeing the team to focus on core operations.

Evanglisches Diakoniekrankenhaus Freiburg

Thomas Hederer

Head of IT