Case Studies > Absolute helps London Borough of Camden cement its reputation for protecting public sector devices

Absolute helps London Borough of Camden cement its reputation for protecting public sector devices

Company Size

1,000+

Region

Europe

Country

United Kingdom

Product

Absolute

Tech Stack

SaaS
Online Portal

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Endpoint Security
Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Facility Management

Use Cases

Regulatory Compliance Monitoring
Remote Asset Management
Security Claims Evaluation

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

The London Borough of Camden serves around 230,000 people living in an area covering inner London, north of the West End and the City of London. The Council is one of a handful of local authorities across the UK to have achieved four-star status – central government’s highest award for excellent levels of service to the community. The same ethos that helped win the four-star performance award extends to the way the authority controls and manages computers and data security. Mindful of how some public sector organizations have been criticized for the failure to track computers, especially mobile devices, Camden has implemented a very high level of security for its laptops. This is based on industry-standard recommendations for mobile device security: password protection, hard disk encryption and data protection, and computer tracking. With most of these in place, Camden needed to find an effective solution for computer tracking, and it did not need to look far for the answer.

The Challenge

With a spotlight on public sector organizations, Camden sought to add an additional layer of security that ensured information would be secured and protected from unauthorized access and usage. Camden also wanted a tool to boost efficiencies by improving the utilization of existing assets rather than buying more of them. Camden wanted to increase its overall productivity: IT managers did not have a streamlined solution for mass deployment over large and complex estates.

The Solution

According to Ian Lawrence, Technical Services Manager at the London Borough of Camden, “Absolute was the only solution that met our standard for achieving the final part of our mobile security strategy. We needed a persistent technology where there was no possibility of the client being tampered with. Now with Absolute, even if someone steals a laptop and makes an attempt to remove the agent, the technology simply rebuilds itself. It is the solidity and the extra security hardening that Absolute offers that made it a big plus for us.” Some of the other aspects of the Absolute solution that have impressed Camden are the online portal and the software as a service (SaaS) feature. Via the portal, Lawrence can see laptop activity in real-time and access a wide range of reports quickly. Absolute’s SaaS meant that Camden did not have to buy another server to host the solution. Not only does this reduce costs, it also removes the administration complexity often needed in public sector purchasing. “It’s a whole project justification and procurement process I don’t need to worry about,” says Lawrence. Camden is also looking at using another feature of Absolute to help improve management of its laptops. This is the ability to send messages or alerts to individuals or groups of laptops such as asking users to bring in a laptop for maintenance or sending out a general security message.

Operational Impact

Accurate record of the number of laptops in the organization.
If a laptop is stolen, sensitive data can be removed, or even recovered.
Can send messages or alerts to individuals or groups of laptops such as asking users to bring in a laptop for maintenance or sending out a general security message.

Quantitative Benefit