West Midlands Police secures identity management with new IT

West Midlands Police is the second largest police force in the country covering an area of 348 square miles and serving a population of 2.6 million citizens. The Gateway programme aims to use technology to integrate a number of business processes to provide police officers and police staff with access to reference data such as the Police National Database (PND), access to facilities and computer systems as well as duty rota and attendance information.

According to Paul Williamson of West Midlands Police, 'Our Gateway programme integrates 13 discrete projects and associated business processes into one secure solution for our personnel to access buildings, computer systems and national reference data for more effective policing. Technology is critical to enabling more effective integration of these processes. We chose Sysec to implement the PKI infrastructure because of their focus on security and expertise in identity and access management solutions.'

The Gateway programme will provide West Midlands Police with a consistent and secure method for providing access to all facilities and systems. The solution complies with the requirements for access to the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) Police National Database (PND). The PKI infrastructure provided by Sysec will provide the highest levels of security and provide a full audit trail for all building and system accesses. The solution will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the force's operations by enabling secure authentication for individuals accessing police computer systems. In addition, the solution enables digital signing of documents and access for officers to police systems from any location thus reducing the need to travel and increasing time for frontline policing.

Andy Bryars, Security Consultant for Sysec Security Group, commented, 'Sysec is working in partnership with our chosen technology providers to deliver the solution. The solution will ensure the integrity of the security for both physical access to facilities and logical access to computer systems in the office, via the web and when on duty. This will provide West Midlands Police with a highly flexible solution for access to the facilities and systems and improve productivity by delivering more effective, technology-enabled policing.'

West Midlands Police are continuing to evolve the Gateway project to encompass additional business processes to improve efficiency and to deliver further cost savings.

As the second largest police force in the country and working with other police forces and agencies on a number of key national security projects such as Olympics 2012, the authority's aim is to be recognised as a model of sensible, practical policing enabled by technology. Sysec is working in close partnership with West Midlands Police to deliver secure and flexible access and identity management to police facilities and systems.