IBM snaps up £30m cyber security contract from NHS Digital
- 2 July 2018
IBM has secured a £30m contract from NHS Digital to bolster the organisation’s cyber security capabilities.
Under a three-year partnership, IBM will provide a range of enhanced data security services to NHS Digital’s cyber security operations centre (CSOC) that will enable it to strengthen the protection it offers health and care organisations.
This includes penetration testing and malware analysis, incident response support and threat monitoring across national NHS systems and services.
NHS Digital put out a tender for an external partner to expand its CSOC in November 2017 as part of efforts to patch up weaknesses in its security defences, which were laid bare during 2017’s WannaCry incident.
The value of the contract was raised from £20m to £30m in February after the NHS released more funding for cyber security.
Dan Taylor, programme director of NHS Digital’s data security centre, said the partnership would “strengthen how we help to keep patient information and services safe and secure, enabling NHS staff and patients to have confidence in the security of our system.”
Taylor added: “This partnership [will] give us, during times of increased need, the ability to draw on a pool of dedicated professionals from IBM.
“It will build on our existing ability to proactively monitor for security threats, risks, and emerging vulnerabilities, while supporting the development of new services for the future and enabling us to better support the existing needs of local organisations.
“This will ensure that we can evolve our security capability in line with the evolving cyber threat landscape.”
Through the partnership, NHS Digital will get access to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence suite, which provides up-to-date information regarding the global threat landscape so that organisations can take pre-emptive measures.
IBM will also help NHS Digital run pilots aimed at identifying the most appropriate security monitoring technologies for NHS organisations, and provide advice and guidance to staff.
Rob Sedman, director of security at IBM UK and Ireland, said: “IBM is excited to partner with NHS Digital and bring enhanced detection and incident response co-ordination capabilities to its Data Security Centre”.
7 Comments
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Somewhere in the decision-maker’s mind, even if not at a conscious level, was the phrase “No-one ever got fired for buying IBM”. It’s disappointing, 30yr after the maxim was first used, to find it still affects the thinking of those who are paid well enough to take braver decisions. Or maybe that’s the problem – the pay is so good it obliges (self-)defensive thinking.
The BSI (British Standards Institute) has an in-house cyber-security group set up to provide exactly the expertise being bought from IBM. Isn’t that the sort of local alliance we’d have wanted to see the NHS forging? And was anyone in NHS Digital even aware of this possibility?
NHS have no idea how to spend money wisely, they could have given it to a UK based security company who could do the job much better with a fraction of the price and created more jobs to local and skilled people all over the country.
They did this because they don’t what they do with people’s money. They could have hired a proper company for far less money. However, since the people choose brexit, this is the result. More taxes, more money to spend for NHS “security”, and other bananas. After brexit you best leave this country if you know what’s best for you.
Of all the 100s of possible public sector cyber security companies out there, NHS Digital buys from IBM. Why, oh why oh why…all this guff of best of breed, new approaches. Even if they submitted the best tender, they are not the best company for this. Thoroughly cheesed off by reading this and no, I am not a tech supplier with sour grapes!
Why IBM, they are not Security experts.
Their IBM mainframes are a damn site more secure than those well known sieves, the Windows products. They are the root cause of cyberinsecurity in my view.
Have you looked at the new IBM z series total encryption servers? [No, I don’t work for IBM]. They have been talking security for 40 years or more on their servers (RACF) when others were delighting in being ‘open’.
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