Palm Cove Society is a highly regarded social enterprise providing supported accommodation for vulnerable men, women and children in and around Bradford and Leeds. The challenge was securely sharing clients’ sensitive and personal information.
Palm Cove Society is a highly regarded social enterprise providing supported accommodation for vulnerable men, women and children in and around Bradford and Leeds. The challenge was securely sharing clients’ sensitive and personal information.
Palm Cove Society is a highly regarded social enterprise providing supported accommodation for vulnerable men, women and children in and around Bradford and Leeds.
They also provide an outreach service for vulnerable individuals, particularly victims of human trafficking and modern slavery. At any given time, Palm Cove is supporting around 300 people.
Each day, Palm Cove’s 60 staff members send and receive sensitive and confidential information about the individuals they work with.
Both internally, and with external organisations including local authorities, the Home Office, the police, the NHS, domestic violence forums, and other charities.
Managing Director Yvonne Hall explains: “Historically, we used to fax information, but that’s a long time ago! More recently, we just used to send it over Office 365, via general email. But when GDPR came in, that obviously forced us to rethink the way we were doing things.”
After being recommended Galaxkey Secure Email by a local authority in 2018, Yvonne realised it was ideal for Palm Cove Society’s needs. They’d previously tried another secure email platform, but found Galaxkey much easier to use.
Galaxkey provides end-to-end encryption of all emails and attachments. This means data is securely protected both while an email’s being sent and when it’s stored in inboxes and folders.
Once installed, Galaxkey works seamlessly alongside Microsoft 365 and other programs. So Palm Cove staff can get on with their daily tasks, knowing all data is being kept safe.
“Galaxkey is robust and easy to use. I like the way it’s embedded into our existing systems as opposed to having to access a separate platform. When you want to send an email from your normal inbox, a message pops up: “Do you want to send it securely via Galaxkey?” And you just click yes – and straight away, it’s gone.”
Yvonne was impressed with Galaxkey’s support in making sure all staff had Galaxkey Secure Email set up correctly and were confident in
using it. “Galaxkey’s support staff were absolutely phenomenal. They helped us, and jumped on computers when necessary and showed us what to do.”
“Galaxkey’s support staff were absolutely phenomenal. They helped us, and jumped on computers when necessary and showed us what to do.”
Palm Cove’s staff quickly adapted to using Galaxkey for sending all emails: “It’s just become second nature.”
Now when Palm Cove Society staff share sensitive information, they have absolute confidence it will stay securely encrypted and can’t be accessed by anyone without permission.
“It’s very, very helpful to be able to send confidential data using Galaxkey. We know that the information is secure and cannot be intercepted. So staff feel comfortable transmitting information about their clients, both to each other and to the external agencies we work with.”
As a not-for-profit organisation working with vulnerable individuals, Palm Cove Society has to ensure compliance with many regulations and standards, not least GDPR. Yvonne recalls a key moment when they realised the improvements Galaxkey had helped them to achieve, during a routine IT audit.
“Our commissioners want to see that we’ve got the capacity to transmit information securely. And the auditors really liked the fact that as well as Office 365, which is encrypted but not end-to-end, we also had a separate platform for encrypting both internal and external emails. They thought that was a really good bonus – double protection.”
Galaxkey has become essential to Palm Cove Society’s operations.
