Great Yarmouth controls network with Sophos

NHS Great Yarmouth and Waveney has deployed a Sophos network access control solution to protect its network and enforce baseline IT policies.

The primary care trust covers a population of more than 200,000 people and has seen a rise in remote working and requests for guest access to its network, either for work or for web-browsing. It wanted to be able to control access and make sure that PCs, laptops and other devices using the network met basic IT policies.

Consultants Foursys recommended the Sophos NAC Advanced product, which will protect the network, automate patching and anti-virus protection, and set appropriate access levels for users.

The solution has been deployed throughout the PCT’s headquarters and to all PCs on the corporate network. There are now plans to roll it out across GP and community sites.

“With so many wi-fi enabled devices around today, many organisations are finding it difficult to effectively control who and what is accessing their network,” said Jonathan Hughes, vice president of Sophos UK. “Banning access outright risks hitting productivity. NAC provides a flexible, yet secure, approach to managing the network, users and data.”

The solution checks that service packs and patches are up to date on all machines, that their firewalls are turned on and their anti-virus up to date. Any devices that fail to adhere to these policies are isolated from the network. Unknown devices are authenticated and then provided with filtered access to the internet, while prevented from accessing internal systems.

“It has brought confidence because we now know that all endpoints are complying with our defined baseline policies,” said Andrew Brinded, NHS Great Yarmouth and Waveney IT services engineer.

“Another key factor is that we have the ability to ensure that an issue is immediately resolve. It gives us the ability to say: ‘If you don’t comply with our policies, you get placed in a bubble and can only talk to a subset of devices on the network’.”