NHS Birmingham, UK calls on WALLIX to ensure business continuity

Birmingham Community Healthcare is a part of the UK's public health system - the National Health Service (NHS) - which covers the West Midlands region, including the city of Birmingham; the second most populous city in the UK after London. NHS Birmingham has 5,000 employees and a catalogue of more than 100 care services provided at home or in the network's 200 health facilities.

Data, the new black gold of our economy, is highly coveted by hackers. Healthcare institutions, already a target of choice because of their digitally dependent nature and the value of the data they possess, cannot afford to have their business shut down because of a cyber-attack, especially during a health crisis. With the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare institutions around the world have had to cope with the massive influx of patients, ensure continuity of care, and limit the spread of the virus through new digital uses: remote working, videoconferencing, collaborative work tools, teleconsultations, dematerialized consultation reports, etc. These new uses, all new gateways for cybercriminals, drastically increase the need for data protection. 

It is in this context that NHS Birmingham calls upon WALLIX and deploys, from April 2020, together with the integrator PNL Tools LTD trading as Armstrong, WALLIX Bastion, the flagship solution for managing privileged accounts in WALLIX's portfolio of unified solutions. As a result, NHS Birmingham is now able to detect intrusions and therefore attempted cyberattacks that could bring business to a standstill. WALLIX Bastion controls and monitors all access to NHS Birmingham's IT infrastructure. This ensures that sensitive and critical data is protected.

In addition to finding a solution to ensure business continuity during this difficult period, NHS Birmingham needs to increase the security of remote access and comply with regulatory requirements. WALLIX Bastion enables NHS Birmingham to have traceability of all actions performed on servers and applications. In addition, access to the IT system is approved by an administrator, which significantly enhances security, ensuring regulatory compliance with data protection regulations.

"We worked closely with the Armstrong integrator to identify the best solution on the market. Based on their recommendation, we decided to opt for a POC (Proof of Concept) with WALLIX. After a test phase, we knew it was the right solution for us. The WALLIX teams were able to deliver quality advice, while being quick and competent at all times and showed great availability and flexibility in these difficult times. Thanks to WALLIX, we have been able to adapt to the health crisis without any difficulty and in complete security," explains Iqbal Mahal, Head of Server Infrastructure within the Digital Technology Services at the Birmingham Community Healthcare IT department (BCHC IT).