With nearly 10,000 employees, Bradford City Council sends and receives thousands of emails and files daily. Their challenge was afeguarding sensitive email data without paying exorbitant costs.
With nearly 10,000 employees, Bradford City Council sends and receives thousands of emails and files daily. Their challenge was afeguarding sensitive email data without paying exorbitant costs.
With nearly 10,000 employees, Bradford City Council sends and receives thousands of emails and files daily.
Keeping sensitive data secure at all times is vital, yet can be challenging. Especially when liaising with third parties – including ordinary citizens – whose email security doesn’t necessarily meet stringent local authority standards.
Initially, around 300 priority staff used a secure email encryption platform. When General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) appeared on the horizon, Bradford Council decided to roll this out across the whole organisation.
But their existing secure email provider had raised its prices, so they were no longer viable for a budget- conscious local authority.
Yunus Mayat, Enterprise Architect and Systems Services Manager, spoke to several suppliers to find an alternative. The council needed a comprehensive yet user-friendly way to secure emails and files that wouldn’t disrupt their existing business processes. And it needed to be reasonably priced, even for thousands of users.
They were also keen to find a vendor with the flexibility to make any adaptations required to meet their specific needs as a local authority.
“We need to make sure email is secure for our non-government users, especially. Because people working in government already have security features in place to protect emails. But when you contact constituents, they’re probably on Gmail, Hotmail or Outlook. And it’s probably not as secure as it could be, because it’s just their personal email account. So we were asking, how can we share sensitive information with them securely?”
Galaxkey provides ultra-secure, user- friendly email security with bespoke customisations.
Yunus and his colleagues asked Managed Security Solutions (MSS) for recommendations. They suggested Galaxkey, which provides military grade, end-to-end encryption for all emails and files, both during sending and when stored.
This means data is kept locked up safe 24/7, and cannot be accessed even if email accounts are compromised. There are no passwords which could be guessed or hacked.
Only the intended recipients can open emails sent with Galaxkey. And, crucially for Bradford Council, data is still protected even when people without a Galaxkey license receive and reply to emails or open attachments.
After a successful pilot scheme – including comparison against Bradford Council’s existing secure email platform – Galaxkey Secure Email was rolled out to the whole local authority. Galaxkey and MSS worked closely with Yunus and his colleagues to provide support and technical guidance at every step.
Galaxkey also customised some features in response to Bradford Council’s requests. This ensured that day-to-day use of Galaxkey Secure Email integrates smoothly into the council’s existing business processes and systems, without hampering efficiency.
Yunus recalls, “Galaxkey very quickly made sure we had the enhancements we needed to do everything we wanted.”
“The turnaround time was amazing. I’d say it would probably take other companies 6-12 months to do what Galaxkey delivered within a three-month period. They were really on the ball.”
Bradford Council also now uses Galaxkey Secure Sign, which enables instant, tamper-proof digital signing of documents. “It’s absolutely brilliant. I use it often. So we save money versus using DocuSign and Adobe to sign documents electronically.”
Data security fit for a local authority.
Since introducing Galaxkey, Bradford Council’s nearly 10,000 employees can safely send, receive, and store all the emails and files they need to, every day.
This includes exchanging confidential information securely with third parties – which many staff do extensively – including ordinary citizens using their personal email accounts.
With Galaxkey, users enjoy significant peace of mind, knowing all data is safeguarded at all times. And because Galaxkey is integrated into their existing systems, it doesn’t interfere with staff getting on with their tasks.
Using Galaxkey helps Bradford Council ensure compliance with GDPR and other data protection standards that are crucial to a local authority.
“The last thing you want is to have a data breach, so your organisation’s reputation goes down and nobody wants to do any business with you. Galaxkey meets all our standards as a local authority. I recommend it to any public sector organisation looking for a secure email solution.”
Yunus and his colleagues have been consistently impressed with the responsiveness and quality of Galaxkey’s customer service. At the end of their original three-year contract with Galaxkey, Bradford Council renewed for another five years.
“We’ve built a really positive relationship with Galaxkey. As soon as an issue is raised, they’re on it: ‘Not a problem, we’ll get our developers on it.’ Its amazing. They give 100% service.”
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