Case Study: Southern Cross Hospitals achieves improved Internet performance and centralized security with Palo Alto Networks

Hospital Network Finds Prescription for Healthy Network Security

Southern Cross Hospitals, New Zealand’s largest private surgical network with 10 wholly owned and 8 joint‑venture facilities serving about 75,000 patients a year, faced growing cyberthreats and a need to improve Internet performance and site resilience at each hospital while maintaining central control and consistent security across many connected medical and IT devices.

The organization deployed Palo Alto Networks’ Next‑Generation Security Platform—PA‑3020 and PA‑500 firewalls at sites, Panorama centralized management, and subscriptions including Threat Prevention, URL Filtering (PAN‑DB) and WildFire—enabling distributed Internet access with centralized policy and visibility. The rollout improved Internet performance and resilience, increased traffic visibility and forensic capability, ensured consistent rule sets with fewer configuration changes, strengthened protection against zero‑day exploits, and avoided substantial WAN cost increases.

Southern Cross Hospitals

Tony Allwood

IS Solution Architect