Weeknotes s02e06

TL,DR: Another week of progressing Business Cases and the Ongoing Cyber Incident

[W/C 22/08/2022]

For my last weeknotes view them here here weeknotes s02e05.

Who did you talk to outside your organisation?

• Review meeting with supplier early in the week regarding their WiFi proposal following up from clarifications from last week to enable us to build out the final elements of the KGH Wi-Fi business case.
• Caught up with Becky Kasumba from NHS Digital around progressing a blog post on the KGH Cloud Journey. We have had a few meetings to discuss the journey and how it could be presented to help others looking to traverse the same path. I think we managed to get quite few bits covered off. Looking forward to seeing this published. Agreed to some weekly catch-ups to get it over the line.
• Follow on scoping session for a pretty impressive zero day cyber security toolset with a specialist cyber security supplier. We are looking to initiate a proof of concept along with building up a business case to progress. A number of us have now seen the demo of the product and it’s capabilities. Used quite extensively in the US and a long never been breached record that stops zero day cyber incidents in its tracks.
• Few separate sessions with Phoenix this week. We discussed some Microsoft funding opportunities which may help us to augment the NGH Cloud Business Case. There are quite a number of good scaleable funding offers on. Also discussed SD WAN vendor agnostic review and explore what Phoenix could offer in this space. This was a follow on from an exploratory conversation from the previous week. Hoping to hear back next week.
• Joined Riner and team with a meeting with DELL to review thin client options to use with Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD). Riner is working on including thin client devices as a part of the desktop hardware refresh business case. I joined primarily as its our next step in our AVD journey to enable faster and persistent logins in fast footfall clinical areas. Hoping to link this AVD workstream into our SSO project to leverage single sign on using AVD on thin clients. The objective is to enable clinicians to login fast and persistently with Single Sign On regardless of which device within busy areas within the hospital such as A&E.

What would you have liked to do more of?

Literally ran out of time this week due to competing priorities, which impacted:

• Single Sign On (SSO) procurement specification to enable us to progress on the next steps to formally select a supplier and enable a proof of concept across the UHN Group.
• Scoping and developing the Cyber Security toolset business case. Really keen to get this written up for review as i think it may well be a game changer in improving our cyber resilience.

What do you wish you could have changed?

We have our Microsoft EA renewal anniversary fast approaching and need to get our order raised 30 days in advanced. There are some clarifications/approvals needed on allocated budget, which unfortunately have been pushed into next week and consequently very close to the deadline.

What challenged me?

• The situation with the ongoing cyber incident has improved from last week, with assurance levels improving from low to medium around connectivity for the Finance system. However, not without some local risk assurance considerations that we will need to weigh up ahead of re-connection. Difficult to weigh up local risk in the absence of any detailed information, eg we still don’t know what type of ransomware Advanced were hit by, what the attack route in was, and the detail of what has actually been done since. How secure is the underlying architecture? How long did the threat actor have access to their systems? In any situation the longer an incident goes on the longer the operational impact is felt, so the pressure is on to find a safe way to reconnect to balance the local cyber risk.

• Following on from the news we heard towards the end of last week regarding the delays to the Digital restructuring process was talked through at length with staff at our August townhall for Digital. Some frank questions posed and responded to. Shared some of my thoughts post the townhall with Tom Norton (KGH Digital Director) around what may help folk, as the hardest part of going through a restructure for staff is the fear of the unknown. Communicating atleast the Service Design which describes the detail of the problem we are aiming to fix for which the output is the restructuring that enables it, would be a good to share as it removes some of the shadow of the unknown. Obviously the restructuring elements are the more sensitive people process part of it and can’t yet be formally shared.

What did you enjoy?

Myself, Grant and Riner talked through a more slicker cloud based solution for our re-connection plan in response to the ongoing cyber incident with Advanced (impacting our Finance system). A solution which segregates system access from all other resources and systems, along with identity management security controls. Having cloud based services as an option or toolset to work with in Azure is paying dividends this week. Feeling a lot more assured about reconnecting to Advanced given that we will have a controlled environment that limits any risk and is scaleable from a usage perspective. This will hopefully help stave off the operational pressure to fully re-enable the service to pre-incident level of access. Many Trust’s have done so already at the acceptance of any risks or by the implementation of additional controls to manage the risk. Towards the end of the week we were looking at options to progress a mirror solution for NGH which will be more challenging given that the cloud infrastructure is still in its infancy at this stage. Over the weekend Grant (KGH IT Infrastructure Manager) and team stood up our secure virtualised environment to test re connectivity on Tuesday next week.

Must admit I did enjoy working up the solution with Phoenix/Infrastructure team with regards to our cloud solution response to the cyber challenge. There was definitely a buzz from bouncing ideas and then actually enabling them in the very short timescales available. No doubt the solution sounded a lot slicker than what we had already put on the table earlier. Down to testing next week with Finance colleagues.

I’ve called it out before, but working with Phoenix as a supplier is a model of what real partnership working really is. Nothing is too much trouble and they recognise they are working with a hospital and pull out all the stops to enable things to move at pace. They have some amazing people working for them.

What did you achieve?

• Some changes to the business case submission dates meant we had an extra week to get cases over the line. The WiFi business case was completed early in the week, has been reviewed and ready to go, over to finance to review before final submission. If approved this will assist the organisation meet its Digital Strategy objectives around:

-improving cyber security and data security to ensure our patients’ records are safe and secure.

-ensuring our network and connectivity keeps pace with our growing digital needs

-reduction in calls logged for poor Wi-Fi and slow or drops in connectivity

-wireless network availability at 99.9+

-robust and latest Wi-Fi technology (currently WiFi6)

• Reviewed and refreshed parts of our business case for a new portal enhanced Intranet again. Some refreshed finances needed next week and a review of one of the options left, hoping it gets approval this time around. Updated the risk segment and impact statements. Made some of the compelling reasons more poignant given the criticality to take action in this area and not just from a risk perspective but also to bring about much needed transformation of how the intranet is used as a communications tool in a digital setting.
• Reviewed and fedback on the draft Network Infrastructure Business Case which has also made a good start. Hopefully we will have that finalised early next week. This will be an extensive programme spanning 2 years of work and expenditure which will keep our Network team busy but more importantly improve on the current infrastructure by delivering a robust, resilient and secure network all managed and monitored from the cloud.
• Assisted on the Windows 11 Business Case, will get further into reviewing the case in more detail next week, but looked like Riner had this in good shape as we ended the week.

What did you learn?

DELL introduced us to thin client laptops which were brilliant! Myself and Riner’s lightbulbs went on almost immediately! All of it managed by a centralised cloud based management console to keep them updated, capable of running AVD for remote/distributed users not wanting to use their own kit and avoids dishing out a laptop that needs management/updating/patching etc. improves our cyber posture. Of course if we can convince users to use their own machines using AVD it also negates having to dish out a laptop, no doubt we will get mixed results and there is a local device performance element to consider. Culturally in the NHS, BYOD is something that we struggle with even when we can enable it. Using your own kit in a secure VDI or cloud app bubble seems like it is fairly common practice in the private sector.

What are you looking forward to next week?

• Following a Digital HIP2 regroup earlier this week with Andy Callow, Tom Norton and Dave Smith I will be making a start on developing a detailed data centre options appraisal paper to be presented at Programme Board for the new hospital in a few weeks time. Ideally we would like to completely retire one of our on prem data centres. However the timing and supplier readiness makes this more challenging in deciding what our next steps should be with the pending new hospital heading our way. We have a follow up review meeting in a couple of weeks to review draft and progress.
• Fortinet SD WAN demo to gain a wider spectrum of what their solution looks like and what differentiates it from other vendors.
• Overview of Rubrik’s Cloud offering to get a refreshed review on how their technology stack has improved from when we last saw it a while back now and to see if it could help us to improve our current backup position.
• Catchup with Stephen Creasey, Head of Technical Services, United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust around Wi-Fi and Infrastructure in general.
• Catch up with Jas Virdi and Andrew Blewitt from Extreme Networks to follow on some discussions around network infrastructure as a whole and how we leverage some of our existing and pending investments to assist us on the HIMSS Infrastructure Adoption Model (INFRAM) journey.

Originally published at http://jwsingh.wordpress.com on August 28, 2022.