Dundee City Council chooses StoneGate
for unrivalled redundancy
Major Scottish local authority builds greater resilience and
reliability into its security infrastructure and wide area network connections by deploying
Stonesoft’s innovative Multi-Link technology.
Dundee City Council is one of the largest metropolitan local government bodies in Scotland, responsible for supporting the welfare of a large and diverse city population. The council has chosen Stonesoft’s StoneGate Platform as a powerful and cost-effective solution for adding strength and redundancy to its current IT and security infrastructure.
Dundee is a modern and vibrant city with a rich history and proud traditions. Located on the east coast of Scotland where the River Tay flows into the North Sea, it is the fourth largest city in Scotland with a population of 165,000 people.
Dundee City Council provides a comprehensive range of services for all ages of people across the city and has a strong history of working with local people. Above all, the council is committed a plan of broad improvements to city services, regeneration and modernisation, and this includes its IT infrastructure. The council also has strong record of getting the best out of partnerships when working with other public and private sector bodies.
Dundee City Council first heard about Stonesoft through its existing relationship with trusted security advisor, Sapphire. The council was installing an IBM zSeries mainframe, and discovered that Stonesoft could run its StoneGate Security Platform on this system. Although the council ultimately decided not to install the software on its IBM zSeries mainframe, the IT team was so impressed by the Multi-Link capabilities demonstrated by Stonesoft at the time, that it had no hesitation in continuing with the decision to adopt StoneGate.
Tim Simpson is Dundee City Council’s IT support manager. He is responsible for the support and maintenance of the council’s IT infrastructure, including corporate servers and desktops. The council provides all the usual local government applications from payroll, through council tax to social work, planning, housing and other services.
This of course meant that Stonesoft’s firewalling and Multi-Link technologies were of primary interest, although IPS capabilities were also considered a welcome addition for possible future implementation.The major requirement that prompted Dundee City Council to investigate upgrading its existing IT security performance and management in the first place was a desire to have dual internet feeds which would automatically failover if required in the event of a wide-area connection outage.”
Tim Simpson, IT support manager, Dundee City Council
StoneGate’s Multi-Link technology overcomes a number of availability and latency issues sometimes associated with public networks, especially the Internet. Traditionally, connections provided by ISPs have been a single point of failure for public sector bodies just as they are for private companies. In order to eliminate this risk, IT managers have had to resort to very complicated and costly solutions such as redundant routers and switches, routing protocols such as BGP and HSRP, and peering arrangements between ISPs.
StoneGate’s Multi-Link Technology and ISP Multi-homing techniques solve this problem by providing organizations such as Dundee City Council with highly available ISP connectivity in a simple and straightforward and cost-effective manner. If one link fails, traffic is automatically failed over to a backup connection or connections.
Multi-Link supports many types of Internet links, including ISDN, DSL, leased lines, modem connection and even satellite. With Multi-Link, end users and administrators can guarantee that they always have Internet connectivity on tap when it is needed.
The team at Dundee City Council worked with Stonesoft and independent IT security advisor Sapphire while implementing the StoneGate platform. A representative from Stonesoft assessed the council’s requirements, and configured a demonstration setup of StoneGate Multi-Link failover in action, which worked perfectly. Sapphire also provided a team of technical consultants who were available for both remote and on site support when required.
Tim Simpson admits that technically StoneGate proved rather complex at first, but believes that the true appreciation of the benefits for the council IT systems only became apparent, when one of our ISP connections actually failed:
Technology plays a vital role in transforming and streamlining services offered not only to the public by local government bodies, but also to the civil servants, public sector workers and administrative staff helping to these organisations public efforts. IT services must be provided securely and efficiently to provide the best possible privacy for local people, while ensuring a high-level of authorised information access for staff.“Prior to installing Stonesoft StoneGate, we already understood the importance of having a high-quality firewall in place, but after installing StoneGate we gained the multi-link capability we were looking for.”
Tim Simpson, IT support manager, Dundee City Council
The Stonesoft StoneGate Platform is now fully operational within Dundee City Council, securing services and connectivity across the city. Tim Simpson concludes:
Overall we have been very satisfied with the performance of both the StoneGate platform and the integration services offered by Stonesoft’s partner Sapphire. Sapphire were an immense aid in the getting the system working to our requirements in a very tight timescale.”
About Dundee City Council
Established in 1996, Dundee City Council is one of the largest metropolitan local government bodies in Scotland supporting a population of 165,000 people. It has had considerable success in regenerating its area in the face of complex social and economic challenges, demonstrating a strong commitment to engaging with its local communities.
In recent years the council has shown a commitment to regenerating the city and to empowering local communities, helping to bring about real change and service improvement. The economic position of Dundee is improving through modern scientific industries and enhanced retail and cultural sectors, while the physical environment is being transformed and visitors are presented with an exciting and attractive city centre.
www.dundeecity.gov.uk
StoneGate Platform
StoneGate security and business continuity platform integrates StoneGate firewall, VPN and IPS technologies with key components to ensure the highest network and Internet availability. This solution has been designed to protect business resources through different security levels, and detect and react to threats by ensuring at the same time a continuous availability thanks to StoneGate’s native clustering features.Moreover, Stonesoft’s patented Multi-Link technology allows for load balancing and high availability also in connections from and to Internet, and between VPNs. By offering a global distributed management through a single centralized management server, StoneGate allows organizations to reduce costs and simplify their security and network infrastructure management.
About Stonesoft
Stonesoft Corporation (HEX: SFT1V) is an innovative provider of integrated network security and business continuity solutions. Stonesoft is a global company focused on enterprise level customers requiring advanced network security and always-on business connectivity with low TCO, best price-to-performance ratio, and highest ROI. StoneGate™ Security Platform unifies firewall, VPN and IPS, blending network security, end-to-end availability and award-winning load balancing into a unified and centrally managed system for distributed enterprises. Founded in 1990, Stonesoft Corporation has corporate headquarters in Helsinki, Finland and Americas headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, visit www.stonesoft.com