Work From Home OR The Office With IT Security

Our client Blue Rock were looking for a more flexible working solution.

With businesses having to allow their workforce to work from home more frequently, they have to make sure their IT system is secure enough to do this.

Companies store sensitive customer data so they need to be confident their processes can ensure the safe keeping of this data. This safe keeping can be dependent on both the internal security and users. We recently undertook a project for our customer Blue Rock Insurance that gave them the peace of mind when users were working remotely.

Blue Rock Insurance were keen to find out how they could work more securely both in the office and when working remotely. To help them do this we suggested:

What Did We Do?

We laid out the plan for Blue Rock and they were keen to go with it. Their industry is heavily regulated so the extra steps they can take to make their working environment more secure, the better.

A lot of the initial set up was carried out in our office. We were able to build the server and create all the new user accounts. We could also set up all the new email accounts on 365 and get them prepped before the migration. All of this would just cut down the time required onsite and also cause the least amount of down time for the customer.

We decided we’d do the email work on a Friday and then go onsite Monday to install the server and new firewall. The emails were switched at 10am on the Friday morning. We then handed out new passwords and users were able to access their new mailbox within the hour. Historical mail would transfer over to the new email service over the weekend. This tends to be the longest part of a migration as users can sometimes have upwards of 50GB of mail stored! We kept an eye on things over the weekend but everything went smoothly with the transfer.

On Monday we went onsite to install the new hardware. As we had already done most of the set up offsite all we really needed to do was install the new firewall and then get each user connected to the new server. Each user works off the domain so the way they log in when working in the office is the exact same as when they work from home. This makes things super simple for the user but also more secure to give peace of mind.

The Result

There were a couple of days of snagging as all the users got to know the new system but all in it was a very successful project. Blue Rock now have a fully protected system with multiple layers of security. Another benefit to this set up was when opening their 2nd office it was easy enough to set up a site to site connection. All the users needed were their laptops and that was it.

Simple!

We already provided ongoing support to Blue Rock’s system so we’ll be able to keep the new set up working at peak condition plus keep it up to date with the latest security patches.

Director Tom of Blue Rock had this to say: