
CUSTOMER SUCCESS
East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust
NHS Trust upgrades VPN infrastructure to support increased number of users accessing services with a wider range of devices.
“The project has delivered against our expectations and we estimate that it will achieve cost savings of around 30%”
Why was Pulse Secure chosen?
Active device scanning ensures that devices are up-to-date with correct patches before gaining access to data and applications
Simplified two factor authentication which balances cost and flexibility
Seamless and secure access for guests and existing users
Company
East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust
Industry
Healthcare
Challenges
- Protecting sensitive medical data
- Improving productivity with the use of software based administrative systems while protecting sensitive medical data
- Streamlining secure access in a cost effective way to accommodate BYOD
- Simplifying two factor authentication business
Solutions
- Pulse Secure 5000 series appliances
- Pulse Connect Secure (SSL-VPN)
Introduction
Serving a community of approximately 525,000 people across East Sussex, the Trust is one of the largest organizations in the county employing over 6,000 dedicated staff with an annual turnover of £365 million. With increased use of information technology systems, the Trust has seen a steady rise in request for secure remote access.
Challenge
In common with many healthcare providers, the growing use of software based administrative and clinical systems have increased the demand for more flexible secure access technologies to improve productivity while protecting sensitive medical data. With a growing number of devices and requirements for more remote access, many NHS Trusts in particular are looking at ways to streamline secure access while making cost and efficiency savings.
East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust is an example of an organization going through this process with a legacy secure access solution using a growing number of physical tokens along with an incumbent managed service provider that was starting to become less appropriate for its needs. The use of physical two factor authentication tokens was both expensive in terms of hardware and licensing costs as well as more complex to manage when dealing with on-boarding new staff and updating settings in the event tokens were damaged, lost or stolen.
“We did not feel that our legacy solution and managed service was able to address our growing secure access requirements,” explains Dan Lloyd, senior infrastructure engineer at East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, “In addition, it was assessed that an upgrade would allow us to make considerable saving in ongoing charges along with use of more self-service tools for user on-boarding and maintenance that would provide additional cost savings in terms of management time without compromising security.”