NHS NATIONAL SERVICES SCOTLAND
reschedule appointments if they couldn ’ t make them . " They ' re able to do it all themselves online . It ' s a seamless process ," Flockhart says .
Separate portals were developed for unregistered carers , i . e . people caring for someone in a home setting . " We worked collaboratively with the Scottish Government to create a portal for them to register to get their vaccines as a priority . That was stood up very quickly ."
These are secured thanks to the cloud , specifically Microsoft Azure . " We put a front door on our portal , so if you ' re not in Scotland and you ' re not supposed to be accessing the portal to generate an appointment for yourself , we will block these attempts and will be alerted to this . This type of technology is much easier , secure , and efficient for us to use than it would be for us to set up an on-premise environment ."
" Making use of Azure gives us the ability to be really safe . Once the data is in that environment , it ' s not accessible to anybody outside of that subscription . Humans don ' t necessarily have access to these types of things , as their security protocols are machine-driven rather than by individuals processing and moving data ."
" The dashboards that produce all the COVID statistics have systematic access that extracts information from the case management system . We ' re not relying on people to make these processes run ; they ’ re automated . And because they all sit behind that firewall , it ' s a very ecure environment ."
" Our Azure subscription consumes information from our on-premise environment , done through a single connection which is secured ", Flockhart adds . " This is monitored very closely because we need to proactively make sure
we are ready for any issue . We ' ve recently seen ransomware attacks elsewhere , so there ' s nothing to suggest that NHS Scotland wouldn ' t be a target as well . This is where our security team really come to the fore with the skills that they bring to the table . They are experts in this field and work continuously to provide us with a safe and secure environment to operate within .”
Valued partners As well as Microsoft , NSS Digital and Security have critical partnerships with IT security firm Check Point and giants 02 and Apple . " Check Point is our primary defence barrier , both for our on-premise and our internet-facing services . They also provide us with equipment that supports our internal networking needs ."
38 August 2021