Council Lowers Email Costs while Improving Security
Chelmsford Borough Council is responsible for providing local services to a population of 157,000 and is located 30 miles northeast of London. The council stresses that in order to deliver the outcomes that are important to all its customers, it must develop and maintain high quality and effective services at affordable levels. That management of resources includes making optimum use of the IT department—in terms of both solutions and staff.
The Problem
Growing volumes of spam at the Council and the need to lower administrative overhead costs prompted the IT department to conduct a major review of the council’s email protection strategy. A central part of the review focused on whether they should upgrade the existing on-site software solution or move to a hosted service.
Chelmsford Borough Council asked other local councils how they organise their email security, and through this, decided that a number of key criteria should be at the heart of their evaluation process. These included ease of use, resilience, less central administration, effective end-user functionality, reduction in spam levels, improved reporting, and ultimately, whether a solution would make the running of council business easier.
The council decided that it needed to move away from its existing internal on-network solution, which was detecting approximately a mere 50 percent of incoming spam. In addition to email protection, the council’s goals included reducing administrative costs,
improving reporting, and increasing the productivity of the IT department.
The Solution
Hosted Solution Ensures that Threats Never Reach the Network The Council held a competitive tender process and selected Websense™ Hosted Email Security. The solution, delivered through Websense reseller partner Secon, was fully deployed after a short test period.
Websense Hosted Email Security eliminates spam and malware before they reach the network. The hosted model provides centralized security with built-in redundancy, failover, and business continuity, while easing administration and optimizing network operating and capacity planning costs. Backed by industry-leading service level agreements, it reduces costs, eliminates complexity, and provides the highest degree of protection.
“We wanted to make our internal email structure as cost-effective and straightforward as possible. Ultimately we decided that the Websense solution best fit our business needs,” says Dan Prendergast, senior technical analyst, Corporate Services at Chelmsford Borough Council. “This is the first time we have used a hosted service that provides email security away from our network, and it has delivered an immediate return on our investment.”
Today’s blended Web and email threats are more invasive and sophisticated than ever, and malware attacks are constantly changing. Unlike on-premise technology, where businesses must rely upon in-house IT staff to ensure best security practices, the Websense Hosted Email Security solution takes care of security threats at the Internet level.
“With email security attacks like phishing scams becoming more targeted than ever before, we needed a solution that protects against email borne threats in real-time without us having to find additional in-house resources to manage it. The Websense
hosted solution identifies and prevents unsafe emails from ever reaching our network and protects against all known viruses, thus helping us reduce the time we spend addressing problems caused by spam,” explains Prendergast.
At the heart of this capability is the Websense ThreatSeeker™ Network, preemptively seeking and blocking emerging Web-based threats at the source, providing an additional level of protection against blended security threats and zero-day viruses, and being first to detect and protect against newly emerging threats.
The Results
Reduced Overhead Costs
The on-site email protection software that Chelmsford Borough Council previously used stopped approximately 50 percent of spam traffic, resulting in high call volumes to the IT helpdesk, and associated overhead costs for IT staff dealing with user email problems. That also created an opportunity cost, because IT staff spent time dealing with spam and email duties rather than more valuable development activities. “We needed to cut the helpdesk overhead associated with email management and make the system as timeeffective and straightforward as possible to administer. The Websense hosted solution offered an immediate return on investment through a noticeable decrease in helpdesk calls,” comments Dan Prendergast.
Improved Spam Protection
The Council’s filtered spam rates have vastly improved since it began using Websense Hosted Email Security, and staff have noticed the difference with the new solution. “Undoubtedly, one of the biggest problems for us in the past had been the effectiveness of our antivirus and anti-spam solutions. Coming from a situation where our old solution was only detecting half of our spam, the new hosted solution correctly identifies that up to 80 percent of our total email volume is spam and prevents it from reaching the IT network,” says Prendergast. “Only a couple of people say they have received spam, and the rest have been asking us why their mailboxes seem to be less full of junk mail.”
Granular Reporting and Self-Service Reports for End Users
Websense Hosted Email Security gives staff at Chelmsford Borough Council some control of their own email environment, freeing up time for Prendergast and his IT colleagues. “Using a hosted service enables us to be more productive as an IT department. By reducing the time spent managing email, the IT team can focus on other priorities, safe in the knowledge that the staff are comprehensively protected. We are a small IT department and it makes good sense for our staff to be able to manage their own email filters while we continue to have access to central real-time reports,” adds Prendergast.
Thanks to Websense Hosted Email Security, Chelmsford Borough Council has vastly reduced the administrative overhead costs of managing email while providing more comprehensive email security to its staff—creating a safer and more productive environment for everyone.
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