Sector: Charity
Active Gloucestershire inspires people to unite behind a common vision to increase physical activity. Connecting individuals and organisations to build strong collaborative partnerships. Enabling the growth and impact of we can move, through providing a range of resources, training and support.
‘We believe that physical activity can have a transformative impact on the lives of people and their communities. It is the single biggest thing that can be done to improve a person’s health. We are part of a national network of Active Partnerships operating across England. At our essence, we are about driving positive change.’
Active Gloucestershire were looking for someone to provide day-to-day support, proactive monitoring of systems and account management, as well recommendations to enhance security provisions and decommission their on-site server.
The background
Active Gloucestershire were looking for someone to provide day-to-day support, proactive monitoring of systems and account management, as well recommendations to enhance security provisions and decommission their on-site server.
The solution
At the time of onboarding, Active Gloucestershire’s server was no longer hosting any central applications, only acting as a domain controller (managing user logins), DHCP and File/Print services. With a view of reducing monthly support and backup/continuity costs, the decision was made to decommission the on-site server and migrate data to the cloud.
Following this project, Active Gloucestershire lowered their monthly recurring costs by nearly £200 PCM and users no longer need to dial in by VPN to access their files/folders.
Furthermore, by improving the security provisions as recommended they have reduced their on-going cyber insurance costs, whilst most importantly, given them peace of mind they’re adhering to the best practices.
Managed IT & cyber security services
CSG proactively monitor and manage Active Gloucestershire’s IT environment as part of the fully outsourced IT provision; with cyber security services deployed at inception of the agreement.
Proactive monitoring was enabled via CSG’s agent, which also provides our engineers with access directly onto the end-users machine for fault investigation and correction.
Our account manager meets with Active Gloucestershire’s IT lead every quarter to review the service delivery, any trends within the tickets as well as any changes within both sides of the partnership.
A review of all devices and licenses in use is undertaken to ensure these are correct and Active Gloucestershire’s are not paying for licensing that is no longer in use. This meet also provides an opportunity to chat through any newly available technology that may be bring benefit to how Active Gloucestershire’s wider team operates.
Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation
Active Gloucestershire take a proactive approach to cyber security and one of the requirements of their tender process was that we pushed the company through cyber essentials by an agreed deadline date (which was met).
CSG hold the cyber essentials plus accreditation and have put various other clients through both cyber essentials and cyber essentials plus accreditation; managing the process in full, taking this burden away from the client.
With cyber essentials already in place, cyber essentials plus was the next piece of framework and we worked with our IASME assessor to carry out required checks against Active Gloucestershire’s IT environment, carrying out all required remedial work as appropriate and then liaising with the assessor to undertake the follow-up checks and helping Active Gloucestershire achieve the cyber essentials plus accreditation.
Cyber essentials and cyber essentials plus is a great standard to work towards and CSG have noticed increasing demand for the cyber essentials accreditation from both our clients and suppliers to improve cyber resilience, helping them secure new contract wins and/or funding.
Microsoft Teams Voice
CSG hosted a Teams Voice webinar earlier in the year of which multiple members of the Active Gloucestershire team attended as this technology was on their radar to replace their existing solution, Gamma Horizon, as it did not have multifactor authentication (MFA) available and was going to become problematic for their upcoming cyber essentials renewal.
Active Gloucestershire were happy with the demonstration provided by CSG and decided this was the right route for them as an organisation and CSG were tasked with scoping and deploying this solution for them.
As a non-profit, Active Gloucestershire qualified for NFP licensing from Microsoft for the Phone Standard license and CSG utilised Gamma’s Operator Connect service (calls break out via Gamma’s telephony network rather than Microsoft’s) to introduce further disaster recovery planning, as well as reducing costs in comparison to Microsoft’s Calling Plans.
CSG’s account manager met with the Active Gloucestershire operations team to introduce the platform and scope out the requirements (automated service, hunt groups, office hours) using our in-built documentation (which continuously evolves as the technology changes) and the Teams Voice solution was built parallel to the Horizon system.
New headsets were provided to Active Gloucestershire and a date was firmed up for the number port, which would be the go-live date of the new system.
Given Teams Voice is a cloud-based platform, all preparation and go-live work was completed remotely, with one of our dedicated project engineers managing the transition in full, talking Active Gloucestershire through the entire process and providing end-user training as part of the go-live.
The transition went smoothly and since moving to the new platform, CSG have not had any tickets raised with the Helpdesk for any faults or follow-up queries which is not uncommon for us given most clients now natively use Teams for day-to-day operations as everything is so familiar.
No other supplier considered the value in improving the broadband service in the office which CSG provided which has made a huge difference.
Mobile device management
Active Gloucestershire employees use mobile devices to access both emails and data held in the cloud and therefore, it was proactively recommended a mobile device management and mobile application management solution was deployed to improve their cyber security posture.
Appropriate policies were configured for both Apple and Android devices, with conditional access policies configured to ensure only supported versions of these devices are running, mobile PINs were enforced and rooted/jailbroken phones could not access corporate data. In the event of a phone being lost/stolen, CSG can immediately revoke access from the device to protect corporate data, with this MDM solution aligning them to the latest cyber essentials requirements.
