Case Study: Suffolk Wildlife Trust

Suffolk Wildlife Trust cares for 50 nature reserves with visitor centres at Carlton Marshes and Lackford Lakes. The trust employs staff across the county with some in site-specific roles but many in mobile roles that require operational flexibility.

Steve Aylward, Head of Project Development at Suffolk Wildlife Trust, explains why the trust switched to Strident and its plans for the future.

Enhancing security

"We were looking for IT support to help us strengthen our IT systems and capabilities in order to enable the organisation to develop. Following a tender process, we decided to work with Strident. We were already using Microsoft 365, Teams and Sharepoint so Strident's expertise in this area was important to us."

As part of the transition process, the trust wanted a full system security audit and this part of the Strident Switch process. "We are aware that security is a constantly moving target. It is important, of course, that our IT systems are as secure as possible and we are PCI compliant." PCI is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard as the trust takes payments from its visitors.

Following consultation with Strident, the trust chose to improve their back-up systems by moving away from an on-premise system to a cloud-based solution. "Our data is already in the cloud so using a cloud-based Microsoft 365 backup solution ensures all our email and data is protected. The system works invisibly in the background, in fact, I don't think anyone noticed it was happening, which is great. We are secure without affecting anyone's work routine."

Strident also installed Microsoft Endpoint Manger that enables security features and settings to be configured easily across the trust's Windows PCs and devices running iOS or Android. "This allows us to ensure all our laptops and smartphones are running the latest security patches and have security features enabled, such as passcodes." As with the backup, Endpoint Manager works automatically and invisibly in the background to ensure security is maintained.

Looking to the future

"It is critical to our operation that we have flexibility within the organisation. Staff working in mobile roles or in a hybrid-working environment need to be able to access all the resources they need wherever they are yet remain secure."

As part of this goal the trust will be adding Voice to its Teams installation to enhance communications. "Teams with Voice will increase the reliability and performance of our call system and adds many other productivity benefits by allowing our staff to stay within the Microsoft 365 system."

The trust will also be adding BitLocker to its laptops. "Following government funding, we have dramatically increased the use of laptops across the organisation. This has boosted our flexibility but we need to add further security. BitLocker encrypts the hard drives and helps protect against unauthorised changes from malware."

Working with Strident has allowed to Suffolk Wildlife Trust to enhance the way it works. "IT is an intrinsic part of any organisation and working with a trusted IT partner helps us build for the future."

If your organisation would like to move to Microsoft 365 or you would like to know more about cloud-based backups or Endpoint Manager, then please get in touch and we'll be happy to assist.