Autoforwarding to be downgraded in NHSmail

Connecting for Health have announced automatic forwarding from its email service NHSmail to most e-mail addresses – including site-specific NHS addresses ending in ‘nhs.uk’ – will be turned off at the end of the month for security reasons.

From 30 September, any automatic forwarding of messages to email addresses outside the government secure network will be switched off and subsequently disallowed. E-mail addresses that end ‘nhs.uk’ are not part of the secure network and therefore will no longer be automatically forwarded.

The new policy, which was announced by e-mail, may cause inconvenience to some. In particular, anybody who has configured NHSmail to automatically forward to addresses accessible on their mobile devices will now no longer be able to do so.

"By autoforwarding to non-secure email domains it is no longer possible to guarantee the security of the service or the integrity of clinical information transmitted by NHSmail," said the announcement.

NHSmail, which was called Contact until April this year, is the new NHS-wide e-mail service being delivered by the National Programme for IT.

A spokesperson for CfH explained that the main reason behind the change was to prevent the leakage of patient data. "This precaution is to ensure that clinical information is not ‘accidentally’ sent outside the secure NHSmail service therefore potentially compromising confidentiality.

"This change, which will improve the integrity of the service, will affect less than three percent of NHSmail users. The number of messages involved will vary from user to user."

CfH added that anybody who had their NHSmail redirected to mobile e-mail ought to be able to configure access directly to their email accounts, and that there were comprehensive instructions in place for this. "NHSmail is available for access on any email enabled mobile device that supports industry standard secure email access protocols (SSL IMAP, POP and SMTP).

"If someone has a device that currently receives email autoforwarded from an NHSmail account then they should be able to configure that device to connect directly to NHSmail."

CfH added: "The timing of the change recognises the growing number of service users (now over 200,000) and the need to coincide with the planned service and development schedule."

The agency also told E-Health Insider that it had just started migrating its own email over to the system, as of this week. A total of 90 staff at CfH have started using the service with the rest to follow between now and October.

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