Health & Social Care in Northern Ireland (HSCNI) has reported significant cost savings since moving to the safe access system from CRYPTOCard.

 

CRYPTOCard's two-factor authentication ensures the safety of highly-sensitive patient data

A spokesman for CRYPTOCard said: “Secure data access is crucial in public health administration, but authentication systems have traditionally represented a significant investment for cash-strapped health trusts. With its affordable, high-security solutions, CRYPTOCard has become the new provider of two-factor authentication (2FA) hardware tokens to the health service in Northern Ireland, enabling its six trusts to benefit from secure authentication for remote access via the internet and PSTN.

 

“The previous system’s one-time password-generating hardware tokens required regular replacement, leading to high fixed costs, so there was a clear need for a 2FA solution which offered lower medium and long-term cost. CRYPTOCard met this need with CRYPTO-Shield.”

 

“Secure data access is crucial in public health administration, but authentication systems have traditionally represented a significant investment for cash-strapped health trusts”

          Since the switch, HSCNI has expanded use of CRYPTO-Shield from remote and third-party access to web-based applications such as hospital waiting lists and applications that track and monitor trends in certain illnesses, which hold large volumes of highly-sensitive data and therefore require increased protection.

 

Michael Harnett, ICT security manager at HSCNI, said: “We forecast substantial cost savings by switching to CRYPTOCard arising from lower administration and hardware costs. These savings will easily cover the cost of changing to a new 2FA supplier.

 

“CRYPTOCard’s hardware tokens are highly durable and do not have an expiry date, giving them a longer lifespan than competitive tokens. This allows for more-affordable replacement as well as cost and resource benefits from reduced logistics and deployment requirements. The result has been real savings.”

 

CRYPTOCard offers safe access via a number of easy-to-use devices

Based on this success, the organisation is now upgrading the service to BlackShield ID, CRYPTOCard’s award-winning server-based 2FA application.

 

Harnett said: “The broader range of tokens, including SMS and BlackBerry tokens, will better meet our end-user needs and ultimately achieve additional cost savings.”

 

Jason Hart, senior vice president of CRYPTOCard, added: “BlackShield ID gives HSCNI the flexibility to roll out tokens in soft, USB and SMS formats to suit individual needs. For example, software tokens will be allocated to contractors, removing the need for them to return hardware tokens when the contract expires.”