Ashfield District Council takes a robust,
agile approach to data protection

Client

Formed in 1974, Ashfield District Council consists of Hucknall, Kirkby-in-Ashfield and Sutton-in-Ashfield, together with the parishes of Annesley, Felley and Selston.

Headquartered in Kirkby-in-Ashfield in Nottingham, the council has 650 staff using 520 desktops, 80 laptops accessing 50 servers at any one time.

Dave Richardson, IT Technical Officer at Ashfield District Council, overseas all IT security and encryption across up to six sites.

Challenge

Council employees are increasingly involved in taking critical data off site to work from home. The devices used to do this may not have the necessary government specified security measures in place. With mandated fines of up to £500k for sensitive data loss organisations such as Ashfield District Council are in the firing line if not properly protected.

David Richardson was tasked with finding a supplier that could provide robust, agile (ease of use) high-end security devices provided at the right price from stock. an alternative solution in-house would have been prohibitively time-consuming and expensive.

Solution

As a VAR with depth and breadth of expert IT provision to NHS, Probrand provided a “procurement excellence” process accredited by CIPS. This best practice best value approach offered consistent best price and immediate delivery on ‘beyond brief’ encrypted USB.

Probrand’s exclusive supply of Safestick USBs offered ‘always-on’ AES 256, M.O.D. level encryption, which exceeds CfH specification.

The USBs also come with SafeConsole - a centralised web-based management system that provides a single point of control for all USB devices within an organisation. protected BHSF with on-site failover devices for both the SMA and firewall devices. For even more resilience, it also provided additional failover capacity at its own data centre.

Benefits

Probrand Ltd has so far delivered 150 licensed Safesticks to Ashfield District Council employees most likely to take data off-site.

The USB drives are offered at heavily discounted rates as part of Probrand’s ongoing commitment to supporting the public sector.

Dave Richardson said: “By using a Buying Solutions framework supplier in Probrand, we were able to secure large cashable savings of 45% against other suppliers. This is vitally allowing us to make savings on security products and stretch the reach of our budget to fulfil other IT requirements.

“Probrand’s approved Buying Solutions supplier status certainly appealed to our organisation. This reassured us that Probrand would offer us best practice best value procurement methods ensuring that we would receive the right product at the right price and at the right time - this has proved to be the case on all fronts.

Procuring Safestick through Probrand saved us a staggering 90% on our allotted time for purchase and receipt of delivery.

Probrand’s excellent technical support and guidance has also enabled us to save 75% on our allocated period for implementation - something we have never previously achieved through a supplier.

We are now extremely well protected as an organisation whilst employees remain agile with the ease of use that Safestick brings. I can also monitor and enable on and off-site security more effectively through SafeConsole.

With Probrand’s efficient ‘one-stop-shop’ procurement process coupled with customer service excellence, both cashable and non-cashable savings have been yielded. This truly is a business that understands how to add value and we have improved mobile device security as a result.”