Case Study

Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital

What we did for NHS Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital

Industry: Healthcare

Published: 30/06/2025

Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital

Project Overview

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NNUH) is one of the largest hospitals in the UK with over 8,000 staff and 1,200 beds, delivering over 1 million appointments annually.

The Challenge

  • Legacy VPN solution 
  • Difficulty with management and deployment

 

The Solution

  • Deployment within days rather than weeks
  • Traffic protected by Advanced Threat Protection features
  • Computers are reachable by patching and vulnerability management systems
  • All authentication is directly against Active Directory over the machine tunnel

The Challenge

NNUH’s legacy VPN solution was difficult to manage and deploy; COVID-19 resulted in a need to deploy thousands of new VPN’s which would have taken weeks of manual effort.

The Solution

SEP2 deployed always on VPN, based on Check Point technology, using automatically enrolled machine certificates to deploy rapidly. Always on VPN uses machine tunnels, removing the need to educate users on how to connect and authenticate because they are always connected and always secure. SEP2 also implemented Location Awareness which automatically connects the always on VPN as soon as the device is outside the network with no user intervention.

As a result of deploying always on VPN technology with SEP2, the Network Team has been able to focus its attention on additional COVID related work streams, as always on VPN technology has enabled a zero-touch deployment as part of NNUH’S base build image, considerably reducing the support overhead of traditional VPN solutions and freeing up valuable resources.

Conclusion

The partnership between NNUH and SEP2 has successfully enhanced remote working capabilities with the deployment of an always - on VPN solution. This collaboration has set a strong foundation for NNUHand SEP2 is looking forward to continuing their support and driving further innovations in healthcare technology.

Benefits

NNUH were able to deploy always on VPN to their users in days rather than weeks. Users didn’t require additional training; they continued working as if they were in the hospital.
In addition, NNUH’s remote workers are more secure:
• Traffic protected by Advanced Threat Protection features
• Computers are reachable by patching and vulnerability
management systems
• All authentication is directly against Active Directory over the machine tunnel

Client Testimonial

“SEP2 provided fantastic assistance to get the always on VPN solution enabled quickly, so that our staff could work safely from home while continuing to provide patients services. SEP2 ensured that Trust engineers worked alongside SEP2 engineers which provided invaluable training and knowledge transfer.”

Aaron Hayward, Digital Health Network Manager of Technology

Testimonials

Hear From Those We Protect

You’re vendor agnostic, which is key for growth, and your team are providing really good insights in terms of the alerts raised. They also provide meaningful context behind them, which is great for us as an organisation,”

When we hit the limits of our knowledge, it’s having SEP2 there to say, ‘Try these things first.’ That expertise on hand is really important to us.

To have people like that around our account that we can pick the phone up to and ask questions was refreshing. Ultimately, we trusted SEP2 and we trust you with our cyber security.

Often the term used is ‘you can’t see the wood for the trees’. Most organisations implement security tooling tools and you’ve got different dashboards. The idea is you put them into a single place, and leverage expert resource such as the SEP2 SOC that actually understands that data and work with it on a daily basis. They can assess it case-by-case and escalate it back to us at Funding Circle only when necessary. And that whole process has been really, really smooth.

They are phenomenal: both personable and very knowledgeable. Our main contact is like a fountain of knowledge. If you ask him a question, he always comes back with ten answers – all the shades of grey, not just a ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ To me that shows the level of passion he has, and that he really wants to do things properly.

The original group of people who founded SEP2 were very deep in their knowledge of this type of technology, which can be complicated. It’s become the whole field of firewalls, intrusion prevention, antivirus, ransomware, etc. Cyber security as a whole has really ballooned, and there’s lots of dimensions to it, but you’ve managed to keep up.

During the evaluation process it was clear to me that SEP2 were the strongest candidate from a technical standpoint. During our first meeting, their ability to give immediate solutions to ongoing issues we were experiencing at the time was a breath of fresh air.

SEP2 are knowledgeable, motivated and switched on; they take ownership and they have a drive for resolution. They know their stuff! They are not merely a firewall partner, they are a cyber security partner. They take a strategic approach. They are approachable and offer additional value outside of their support contract. Working with SEP2 means we are no longer fire-fighting; rather we can now take a step back and proactively get things sorted. SEP2 say they are tech driven and people powered, and that’s exactly what they are! It all comes down to the people you are dealing with.

They live and breathe the technology. It comes from the top, however, everyone is an expert within SEP2, from sales through to the service desk. We don’t want to wait to be told what more we can get from vendors’ products. SEP2 are great in pro-actively helping us achieve value-add solutions. They aren’t about chasing revenues, they are about providing best possible value.

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