Case Study: Academia Sector
• 1 min read
Overview
A&O IT Group Help to Build A Robust IT Strategy For a Large College in Surrey
A&O IT’s client is a UK technology college with approximately 10,000 students. The client is an independent, grant-funded further education college operating from a single campus.
It is OFSTED accredited as ‘Good’ with its range of qualifications and courses complying with standards and teaching methodologies. The college has extensive IT networks, a significant IT budget and a high number of concurrent users.
Solutions for your business
The Challenge
Our client faced several significant IT security challenges. Critical systems were operating on out-of-date operating systems, security patches had not been applied and the network architecture was not sufficiently robust to prevent outage. The Board of Governors had real concerns and the potential for reputational damage was significant.
Our client requested A&O IT Group immediately engage, fix current issues, prevent future problems and develop a robust IT strategy for the college.
Solution & Benefits
The A&O IT Group team immediately identified and secured critical systems to protect the college and its students from malware attacks and system outage.
Once secured our team commenced a Business Impact Analysis, an in-depth risk assessment of every system and process across the estate.
This identified a root and cause analysis of major issues, including an urgent need for re-architecting the network to achieve better segregation between mission critical systems, an urgent need to migrate to Office 365 and upskill the IT team.
Added complications included several proprietary systems running on redundant hardware.
The A&O IT Group team mapped a migration to new hardware with minimal downtime for the college and its students.
Our technology roadmap, migration plan and supporting business case were adopted by the Board of Governors.
Long-Term Impacts
The A&O IT Group team were critical to preventing a serious IT outage and security breach for our client.
Critical systems were patched or upgraded, existing processes were reviewed, tested and improved, redundant hardware was replaced, and proprietary systems documented and supported.
A&O IT Group is seen as a trusted advisor and is engaged by our client as part of an ongoing strategic monitoring programme.
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