The Setting Industry: Healthcare Location: Taunton, Somerset, England Founded:1980 Officers and Administration: ~200

St. Margaret’s Somerset Hospice is a charity committed to providing specialist palliative care, advice, support and respite to patients and their families living in Somerset and parts of neighbouring counties.

IT Manager Nick Middleton manages a network with 13 Windows Server 2008 computers and nearly 200 workstations running Windows 7 and Windows XP operating systems.  Approximately half of the workforce uses mobile laptops at 26 sites including two main inpatient units and three county offices.

“St. Margaret’s provides a great deal of community services, and a significant amount of what we do is at patient homes,” said Middleton. “You could say we provide moveable solutions.”

The Challenge
In fashion similar to HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) protocol in the United States, St. Margaret’s Somerset Hospice must conform to Caldicott principles, a set of guidelines established in England and Wales in 1997 to ensure NHS (National Health Service) patient information is secure and confidentiality is not undermined.

“We have exact clinical guidelines set out by Caldicott principles,” said Middleton. “To protect against breaches of confidentiality and ensure security, we have a Senior Medical Consultant whose sole purpose is to be a Caldicott Guardian.”

In addition, Middleton said his organization must also safeguard Intellectual Property Rights. Despite the best-laid plans of principles and humans, however, in early 2007 an ‘information rights issue’ cried out for monitoring software at St. Margaret’s Somerset Hospice

“Confidential information leaked into the public domain,” said Middleton. “The Chief Executive then came to me with the request: ‘can you tell me who has accessed this file?’”

Middleton’s answer was chilling: “I could not!”

Search for a Solution
Middleton said implementing monitoring software was a high-level management decision made in the wake of the disconcerting data breach.

“The first program we tried was based on Windows auditing, and it was a dismal failure,” said Middleton. “Then we noticed Spector 360 while searching the Internet. Working with Snapguard (SpectorSoft’s top UK distributor) we set up a demo and it looked good. We followed that with a trial to ensure Spector 360 met our needs in action, and it did.

“Spector 360 was the only program with the ability to show us who has opened a file, edited a file, and printed a file. With Spector 360, it was very easy to do, and it gave us so much more.

“Spector 360 was a breath of fresh air. I was really amazed at its power and effectiveness.”

Discoveries
Although Spector 360 was purchased to ensure the security of patient information, Middleton said that when he reviewed Spector 360’s many additional features, the potential to easily assess productivity and overall network performance became apparent.

“Using Spector 360 we recently found some social networking activity of concern, much of it Facebook,” said Middleton. “Facebook can be addictive … and costly. We reviewed the use of social networking sites during breaks and lunchtime and found that a number of staff inadvertently left the site open until their next break, which not only hogged network bandwidth but slowed down local computers.

“We discussed this with the Staff Consultative Council and decided to block access to certain sites to remove temptation and improve system performance. Using Spector 360, we blocked Facebook and few other social networking sites using the black list/white list capability. We wouldn’t have been able to identify this without Spector 360.”

• “Since purchasing Spector 360, we’ve also revealed instances of intellectual property theft,” said Middleton. “One employee transferred data to removable media and took it when they left their job … the data was completely gone. They actually took the ONLY copy of a document that there was in existence … on a USB data stick.

“Using Spector 360, we were able to demonstrate it was on removable media. And because we were able to show this, we were able to have it addressed by our legal department.”

Working with Employees
Middleton said St. Margaret’s Somerset Hospice abides by stringent protocol when it comes to viewing Spector 360 data.

“We monitor everything,” said Middleton. “But we use the details only in specific cases and by official request. I am the only person with access to the Spector 360 dashboard. We have strict guidelines in place. I can conduct an overview of activity using Spector 360 at any time, but access to a user’s activity … to drill down from the big picture view … that is by request only, and has to be approved by our Chief Executive.

“We absolutely work to protect the employee and their confidentiality. Our senior management and the legal department work very closely to ensure we don’t infringe on human rights. We block very little, and try to treat our computer users as adults.”

• “With the onset of Spector 360, we amended our policies and procedures to include monitoring,” said Middleton. “It is clear that monitoring is IT policy.”

Awareness
“In addition to our Internet IT Policy we also use a Login Message as a prompt, directing users to review that information,” said Middleton. “We needed to make all employees aware of monitoring, and we are careful to keep them aware.”

Spector 360: The Software of Choice
Middleton said that especially based on discovering the Facebook/social networking concern, St. Margaret’s Somerset Hospice has seen an upturn in overall productivity.

“There’s a definite improvement, absolutely a jump in productivity,” said Middleton. “Thanks to Spector 360, a good staff are even better. Staff are more aware, and apparently, the events surrounding the social networking findings helped with the change.

“Has Spector 360 restored order? We were not in chaos, but monitoring has served as a gentle reminder … that a little personal activity is OK but that company equipment provided them is for work, especially the laptops.

“It’s an education process … should I download personal music to a work laptop? That could be seen as piracy, and with Spector 360 we believe it’s helping employees make better decisions when it comes to those actions.”

• Spector 360’s powerful Search function rates at the top of Middleton’s favorite features.

“From the beginning, that’s what we were looking for, to be able to see and track actions taken on a specific document,” said Middleton. “Using Search to create an audit trail, to see who might have accessed a specific document, which was the initial request we could not comply with … until we implemented Spector 360.”

• Middleton said that one of the most powerful aspects of Spector 360, especially with the large amount of mobile devices in the St. Margaret’s Somerset Hospice work environment, is Spector 360’s ability to track laptops even when not connected to the network.

“We review laptops just like desktop computers,” said Middleton. “We were pleased to learn that with Spector 360, laptop monitoring is 24/7, even though some of our employees thought otherwise. To be able to go back in time and look at laptop activity whenever and wherever it occurred, that is very powerful … and very important to us.”

• “I installed Spector 360 myself and it was easy,” said Middleton. “To make sure I had everything optimized, I did request some assistance, and the support team was excellent.”

• Middleton said he highly values Spector 360’s Network Performance feature, especially to track bandwidth hogging.

• Middleton also is impressed with the Spector 360 Control Center.

“The latest generation of the Control Center is fantastic,” said Middleton. “The Active Directory updates, and the ease with which I can change individual computer monitoring profiles … just great.”

“From an IT guy’s point of view, I feel Spector 360 has been an excellent investment,” said Middleton. “I have recommended it to several of my peers. It has provided major benefits. It’s an incredibly useful tool to ensure we’re never caught in a legal bind.

“Spector 360 has definitely been worth the purchase and the effort. When you compare it to the price of other software necessary to get a computer up and running in a business environment, it’s priced right. Spector 360 is part of the overall picture, an essential part of our network. It’s a performance management tool … to ensure our network and environment are running smoothly.

“I am extremely pleased with Spector 360. It does everything I expected and wanted … and more. I struggle to think of anything I’d like it to do that it doesn’t already!”

For more information about St. Margaret’s Somerset Hospice, please visit
www.somerset-hospice.org.uk