Camden Council goes BYOD with Accellion
Camden adopts a bring your own device (BYOD) strategy to save money, improve security and bring their IT systems into the modern era
A bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategy is being implemented by the London Borough of Camden to cut costs and improve security.
The local council has been working with technology supplier Accellion, as well as mobile deployment specialists Qolcom, to come up with a solution to serve its 8,500 employees and enable them to use Android and iOS-based devices.
The main driver was to save money, which BYOD can do by cutting the need for IT to spend on devices for its staff, as well as internal support.
However, the council also believed allowing its staff to use the smartphones and tablets they wanted would make them happier in the workplace and increase productivity.
Using Accellion’s kitedrive file sync and kitepoint solution for accessing SharePoint and FileShare, the council has enabled staff to access everything they need on the move and collaborate over mobile devices.
Despite other councils’ concerns around the security of BYOD, Camden believed the implementation actually improved its ability to protect sensitive data. Using Accellion Secure Mobile File Sharing, the IT department now has real-time visibility into any sharing taking place on mobile devices and a solid audit trail for when they need to report to regulators.
Every piece of data going across devices is encrypted, whether travelling or dormant in storage, and the private cloud offered by Accellion keeps everything in-house and away from public servers.
“Accellion acts as the single platform for users to access, review and collaborate on content from mobile devices of their choosing, as well as meeting all of our security and compliance requirements,” said Ian Lawrence, IT Manager for Camden Council.
“Now we have a solution that’s integrated with our device management tools and SharePoint, allowing us to securely mobilise our most important content and make BYOD a reality.”
The roll-out has already begun, although initially only to 300 employees at the top level of management. The plan is to continue this to more departments throughout 2013 and eventually enable all employees to access it, although a timeframe for that achievement has not been set.
