SCC becomes first supplier to win G-Cloud security accreditation

IT infrastructure company SCC has become the first supplier on the government’s CloudStore to win pan-government security accreditation.

The firm has gained accreditation for its multi-tenanted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platforms at security impact levels two and three (IL2 / 3) – which cover information deemed sensitive to the working of government.

The company does not yet have any CloudStore customers, but says the accreditation will enable it to sell services to a much larger range of public sector customers. Tracy Westall, SCC’s UK public sector director, told Computer Weekly the company had focused its energy on winning accreditation rather than early customer take-up.

Rhys Sharp, SCC's chief technology officer said: “As you would expect it is has been a long and challenging process, but we have to put it in context of the whole journey that we have already been undertaking.”

He added: “From our discussion with clients we realised accreditation was key. Government is naturally risk-averse, as you would hope it to be.”

He said winning the accreditation did not require the company to make any additional planned investment as it was already focused on winning IL3 accreditation prior to the arrival of the CloudStore in February and has been working closely with the government’s IT security arm CESG.

“We knew were embarking on something intended to be ground-breaking, so our eyes and wallets were wide open,” said Westall.

The company has been in discussion with the G-Cloud team since October 2009. “We made an engagement with the government at an early stage,” said Westall

G-Cloud director Denise McDonagh said she is delighted to see the first UK provider to gain pan-government accreditation.

In a recent blog post McDonagh wrote: “Getting a service accredited for use by the whole of government is pretty rare – suppliers, accreditors and CESG have had to work hard to get it done,” she said.

“I can probably count on both hands the total number of suppliers who have achieved it in the last five years, yet G-Cloud will quadruple or quintuple that number over the next couple of months."