IT and data security company Becrypt has announced that Newcastle-under- Lyme Borough Council has selected its Trusted Client to deliver secure mobile working to its staff.
The company said that the Council has ordered 90 licences for Trusted Client, which will be supplied to staff on USB sticks. The officers can use the USB drives to get secure access to the Council’s virtual private network remotely.
Managed in a central resource pool, staff from all departments, including planning officers, HR and the ICT team will be able to use the USB sticks for mobile and home working, said the company.
Becrypt Trusted Client is used as part of a complete secure technology offering using thin client desktop virtualisation software, via the Council’s secure VPN at the Civic Offices. A mirror system is maintained off-site to provide backup in the event of a disaster.
When used on a USB stick, Trusted Client assumes that the host computer is compromised and restarts it, booting into a corporate OS image that is totally isolated from the host computer’s OS.
The mobile working offering is also part of the Council’s disaster recovery plans to ensure business continuity.
The host hard drive is not accessed so there is no cross contamination of malicious code and no data can be saved locally which stops data leakage. In the event of a disaster, users can also connect remotely and securely to the back up network, said the company.
Newcastle under Lyme Borough Council Head of Customer and ICT Services Jeanette Hilton said the Council wanted to find a competitively priced secure remote access solution to support our occasional home and mobile workers, adding that it also needed a robust solution that is GCSx CoCo compliant and that can support our disaster recovery plan.
Hilton said, "Trusted Client enables staff to access securely our VPN, enabling workforce mobility. Its small footprint has meant that our staff can use their own personal PCs and laptops that may have limited memory to run some desktop applications, giving us significant savings of nearly 80% in hardware costs. It is also much easier to use a USB stick as it is much more flexible and portable. The solution also forms part of our overall risk management strategy to ensure that our information is secure."
Becrypt CEO Bernard Parsons said, "Councils must now comply with the Government legislation on security for their IT systems. This presents a challenge when more councils are also looking to increase access from home or out on the road as a way of improving flexibility and reducing office and travel costs. Becrypt Trusted Client can form part of a secure mobile working solution to address the security issues, while still meeting today’s workplace challenges."
