BlockMaster Protects West Midlands Ambulance Service

BlockMaster, a provider of secure USB flash drives, will supply West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust with over 300 SafeSticks to provide complete security for all removable data.

West Midlands Ambulance Service covers a geographical area of approximately 5,000 square miles and serves 5.3 million people living in Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Coventry, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Birmingham and the Black Country. The Trust has a total number of 3,300 employees, 58 ambulance stations and uses 864 vehicles.

It will be using the SafeSticks to provide all members of staff, wishing to transport data, with complete security through automatic hardware encryption. In addition to this it will use SafeConsole, a web based management solution, to manage, audit, reset passwords, and apply custom policies to all SafeSticks no matter where they are. The sticks have been deployed at the West Ambulance Service by Softek, a leading IT Security, Storage and Archiving Solutions Distributor.

Tony Carne, Head of ICT at West Midlands Ambulance Service comments: “We have been delighted with the SafeSticks, their durability, compact size and military encryption levels. The SafeSticks have provided the reassurance that our data is protected no matter where or who it is with.”

Daniel Östner, CEO at BlockMaster comments: “With the public sector being one of the hardest hit sectors for data loss, it is great to see that the ambulance service is setting the benchmark with information security. Hopefully over the coming months we will see more companies being proactive with data protection, however we believe it is our role to help organisations achieve this by making solutions that have the highest grade security but are also easy-to-use.”

West Midlands Ambulance Service is one of over 100 UK emergency services and NHS organisations currently using SafeStick and SafeConsole to protect portable data. Other medical bodies using the BlockMaster SafeStick include the West Suffolk NHS Hospital Trust and the Aintree University Hospital NHS Trust.

James Baker, Senior Account Manager, Softek concludes: “Data loss is a growing issue for all IT Directors and is a topic which won’t go away over night. Companies must ensure that all data is safely stored on encrypted USB sticks. Simply crossing your fingers and hoping you won’t suffer a breach isn’t good enough any more.”