Government Technology

Summary
Reading Borough Council (RBC) supports and delivers services to Reading town, one of the principal regional and commercial centres in the Thames Valley. The population in the borough is 147,300 and in order to support this thriving community RBC employs 5,500 staff, making it the largest employer in the area.

“Reading Borough Council has an increasingly mobile workforce, many of whom carry extremely sensitive data around on their laptops.  We needed a security tool that was quick and easy to install onto these devices, but above all we had to find a product that was extremely user friendly – a large proportion of our staff are non-IT users, such as social and care workers.  DESlock+, has enabled us to effectively secure mobile data against the threat of lost or stolen information and is a critical part of our suite of security products.”

John Barnfield, IT Programme & Service Delivery Manager, Reading Borough Council

Outsourcing to the experts
Reading Borough Council (RBC) became a unitary authority in 1998 and is one of six unitary authorities created in Berkshire. The Council provides a wide range of essential public services to its constituents such as health care, social care, recycling and refuse collection, and education. RBC’s priorities are a sustainable environment and economy, equality, social inclusion, a safe and healthy environment and a stimulating and rewarding place to live and visit.  

The Council’s main objective is to provide an outstanding service to the general public in the Reading area. Just after it became a unitary authority, RBC made a strategic decision to outsource its IT services to an external supplier and nearly ten years on it is still outsourcing to the same organisation, Northgate Information Solutions.  By entering into this ten year long partnership with Northgate, it has allowed RBC to focus on its core competencies – servicing the Reading public.  

Northgate tendered for the contract along with a number of other organisations. Northgate won the tender which included supporting RBC’s servers, desktops, its service desk and helpdesk. Northgate is a market leader of software applications and outsourcing solutions and provides infrastructure solutions to organisations across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, and specialist ICT managed service solutions in education, local government and utilities.

New technologies are driving change
With the advent of the Internet and the growing reliance on mobile devices, RBC’s employees were increasingly carrying large volumes of sensitive electronic information around.  There were growing concerns over the security of data stored on these laptops.  One of RBC’s key priorities is to protect all confidential information relating to the general public and in January 2005 it was deemed necessary to source a data encryption product to ensure that social workers, care workers and other council workers who were laptop users could protect the data stored on these mobile computers.

Northgate Information Solutions tasked Victor Schooling, a 3rd line support consultant, with finding a suitable solution for the Council. Victor takes up the story:

“My role includes sourcing and implementing new business applications for the Council, from researching into new technologies to seeing the project through to implementation.  It was my job to solve the problem of unprotected, sensitive information on the laptops of 300 council workers.  The solution needed to be easy to implement and manage with minimal impact on the user.  We needed to be able to retrieve data easily in the event of lost passwords and the encryption tool had to meet the latest industry standards.”

The search for superior technology
Several months were spent researching the market and investigating data encryption tools and eventually Northgate purchased PGP, a full disk and volume encryption product, however by the time the purchase had completed, the goal posts had already moved. Victor continues:

“I realised that information was being copied from the online secure network onto the hard disks of staff laptops.  In order to give Council workers access to these files while out of the office and away from the secure network we needed to secure offline folders. Unfortunately, PGP doesn’t offer data encryption for offline folders and this presented a problem for us.”

Northgate realised that a new product needed to be sourced and Victor conducted further research into the market and found DESlock+, a new encryption product manufactured by Data Encryption Systems (DES).  DESlock+ is an extremely cost effective data encryption solution, enabling data protection for single users or workgroups.  It encrypts each file separately allowing information to be securely stored in both on and offline folders.  In April 2005 Victor visited the Infosec Security conference and met Data Encryption Systems and shortly afterwards, purchased 300 user licenses for DESlock+.  Victor comments:

“PGP is a good product, but when the goal posts suddenly moved, DES was the only manufacturer offering software that allowed Northgate and RBC to adapt quickly.  

DESlock+ is extremely user friendly and easy to install. The product does what it is set out to do, with minimal effort required by non-IT users. It takes a maximum of fifteen minutes to not only install the software but for us to also demonstrate the product and effectively train the users. A backup of user security keys are kept by the IT department (stored on the server) and in the event of a lost password, it literally takes two to three minutes to reset.”

Providing a first class service
Northgate has regular update meetings with DES, two or three times a year to talk through modifications and user preferences.  Victor concludes:

“The support provided by DES has been fantastic.  DES is always ready to incorporate changes to better support RBC. DESLock+ has enabled Reading Borough council to be more responsive and efficient in the management of its IT systems and security.”