How BeyondTrust Addresses the NHS Data Security and Protection (DSP) Toolkit Controls

The Data Security and Protection (DSP) Toolkit is a free, online self-assessment tool created by the National Health Service (NHS). The Toolkit enables organisations to measure their performance against the data security and information governance requirements mandated by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

Who does the DSP Toolkit apply to?

All organisations that have access to NHS patient data and systems must use the DSP Toolkit to provide assurance that they are applying sound data security practices and that personal information is being correctly handled.

Participation is mandatory for all organisations that process NHS patient data in order to ensure robust data security and data privacy standards are in place across the healthcare sector. The current Data Security and Protection Toolkit replaced the existing Information Governance Toolkit in April 2018.

How BeyondTrust Can Help You Meet the NHS DSP Toolkit Standards

Below is an introduction to how BeyondTrust can help you adhere to specific requirements of the DSP Toolkit, ensuring that data privacy and information governance standards are sufficiently met within your organisation. For more detail, download our whitepaper, which provides a more detailed mapping of BeyondTrust capabilities to the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit Standards.

Below are some excerpts from the white paper:

1.Does the organisation understand who has access to personal and confidential data through your systems, including any systems which do not support individual logins?

BeyondTrust helps control and manage privileges across the entire network. Using BeyondTrust privileged access management (PAM) solutions, system administrators can download user account reports which can help to demonstrate privileged user access levels within the network.

2.Are users in your organisation only given the minimum access to sensitive information or systems necessary for their role?

BeyondTrust helps organisations implement the principle of least privilege (PoLP) in a completely effective, but pragmatic manner. Customers can easily define granular policies for groups or individual users to help control access and permissions within the network. The combination of least privilege across all endpoints and privileged credential management ensures that users are only given the necessary permissions in order to do their job, at the time privileges are required – thus strengthening data security.

Note that BeyondTrust is an innovator in just-in-time privileged access management, which entails the ability to enforce true least privilege—enforcing both just enough access (JEA) and just-in-time (JIT) access parameters for authorized users, applications, processes. By reducing always-on, or “standing” privileges, organizations can sharply reduce their attack surface and condenses threat windows, while keeping data more secure.

3.Is there a corporate policy on log retention (the secure centralised storage and management of log information)?

BeyondTrust can help supplement these logs with additional context of privilege use - by using privileged session recordings, metadata, and access session details.

4.Explain how logs are retained for a sufficient period, reviewed regularly, and can be searched to identify malicious activity.

Using BeyondTrust solutions, log data can be retained for a configurable period. The reports can be accessed either via a web-based interface or integrated to existing tools using APIs. Users reporting on this data can search for applications that have run, they can filter by user, by endpoint, and by particular dates if, an event has occurred.

5. Are unnecessary user accounts removed or disabled?

Administrators can view and report on credentials which have not been used for a long period of time. It is also possible to view the age of privileged credentials, to determine whether an account should be removed or disabled.