AVAST Software, developer of the avast! antivirus, has announced that The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Trust is in its fourth year of healthy computing after a malware outbreak that went unchecked by its legacy anti-virus software.
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital servesWest Norfolk, South Lincolnshire and North East Cambridgeshire. In 2006, the hospital realised its computer network was highly insecure after a series of malware attacks penetrated the incumbent anti-virus software. Senior hospital management decided to evaluate a number of alternatives in its search for more effective protection. In addition to the big names in antivirus software, one manager had heard about avast! from a relative who had successfully used it on their home PC. The hospital got a free copy of avast! and ran it on a test computer.
“This trial of avast! cleared up an assortment of malware left behind by previous antivirus software”, said Nick Castleton, a senior ICT technician at the Trust. “Based on that experience, we then started evaluating avast! as a possible replacement for the entire Trust.” The hospital then approached Avosec, AVAST’s UK avast! distributor for technical assistance and for NHS pricing. The trust subsequently deployed avast! on 118 servers and over 1500 desktops, “and our virus activity dropped off considerably,” Castleton adds. With avast! in place, the hospital has had a dramatic increase in its level of antivirus and malware protection, “We have an increased detection rate and we now have minimal downtime due to infections,” explains Castleton, “The number of false positives has generally been low and even during the Conflicker outbreak, we worked directly with both Avosec and AVAST and were able to stay operational throughout the processes.”
The hospital employs 2,400 staff with an annual budget of around £140 million. It is rated as one of the 12 most efficient NHS hospitals in terms of value for money. Part of the efficiency savings are due to the hospital’s innovative approach to managing ICT resources for its 1,600 computer users at its main complex on the outskirts of King’s Lynn, Norfolk. Over the last four years, the hospital has steadily expanded the number of licences it has for avast! as well as undergoing a smooth transition to version 4.8. In the case of a recent “zero day” outbreak which Castleton puts down in part to a restriction on being able to patch certain operating systems, avast dispatched a technical team to the site who worked with the Trust to isolate the problem on one particular server and remove the infected application. “The response was fantastic and helped us to minimize the impact of the outbreak,” Castleton says.
James Norris, general manager of Avosec who worked with the trust on the installation of avast added, “Four years ago, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was typical of many healthcare organisations which are reliant on IT systems and open internet access but were unaware of the power of avast! compared to incumbent ‘big brand’ AV software. The different level of protection is striking and can easily be evaluated with a simple – and free – download of avast!”
