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Bloxx Cures Bandwidth Pains for NHS Waltham Forest

North London NHS Trust deploys Bloxx’s third-generation web filtering solution to monitor its staff Internet access and ensure the smooth-running of its IT network

Bloxx, the web content filtering specialist, today announced that NHS Waltham Forest has deployed its Tru-View web filtering technology to monitor and control staff Internet access across its multiple sites.

The Primary Care Trust was established in 2003 to plan, commission and deliver NHS services to the residents of Waltham Forest, North London. Working in partnership with the Local Authority, Waltham Forest aims to ensure access to high quality care is available to the community, by commissioning a full range of hospital, specialist, community, mental health and primary care services.

Ensuring uninterrupted access to the Internet and a healthy, secure IT network is fundamental to the work of Waltham Forest NHS. The trust has recently upgraded to Bloxx’s TVT-1750 solution to track the Internet access of 850 staff across all of its 28 sites.

“Bloxx is primarily used to monitor staff’s access to all websites and restrict access to unauthorised or inappropriate sites,” explains Waltham NHS Head of ICT, Simon Midlane. “The deployment of Bloxx has subsequently enabled us to identify and block access to popular streaming and download sites, which has freed up a considerable amount of bandwidth.”

The Bloxx third-generation web filtering solution utilises all the conventional methods of web filtering, but with added layers of analytical intelligence that take content identification to the next level. Based on each organisation’s usage rules and policy, Bloxx’s Tru-View Technology performs real-time contextual analysis of each requested web page and classifies access requests into pre-defined categories, then determines based on a users access policy to deny or allow access to the page.

“The high level of detailed reporting Bloxx provides has proven particularly useful. We now have easy access to information about popular websites, heavy users of the Internet and download levels,” adds Midlane. “In addition to providing us with more control and providing valuable insight to the organisation’s web use, Bloxx also enforces our pre-existing Acceptable Internet Usage Policy, reminding our staff of when they should and shouldn’t be using certain sites, such as facebook.”

“The issue of staff accessing streaming sites to view multimedia files, as well as social networking sites, whilst at work is an ever increasing problem for organisations,” comments Bloxx’s CEO, Eamonn Doyle. “In addition to the obvious productivity implications, these types of sites can often prove problematic for the entire IT network, sapping valuable bandwidth. It is fantastic to hear how organisations such as Waltham NHS are benefiting from Bloxx by not just restricting access, but by improving communication regarding their organisation’s Acceptable Internet Usage Policy.”