Brent Council plots £3.8m datacentre revamp to offer protection to IT infrastructure from cyber attacks

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Local authority is embarking on a multi-faceted datacentre revamp to offer protection to it from cyber criminals and make certain it must leap encourage more quickly from possible outages

Caroline Donnelly

Caroline Donnelly,
Senior Editor, UK

Published: 18 Jun 2021 12: 24

Brent Council is embarking on a £3.8m datacentre revamp, which can embody an urgent toughen of its backup and catastrophe recovery setup to safeguard it in opposition to cyber attacks.

The work will embody an “incremental” migration from the council’s legacy “physical storage and virtualisation” setup to a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) that will seemingly be geared up with catastrophe recovery-as-a-carrier (DRaaS) capabilities, in conjunction with the replacement of its unusual files backup machine.

“We’re replacing our legacy backup choices for the council with person who would possibly maybe well present a well-known and resilient solution which additional protects us, and our files, from malicious attack,” stated the council’s Expertise roadmap 2021-2025 doc.

“We can put in force an automated recovery solution that can well, within the tournament of a catastrophe or mass failure of products and companies, restore these in account for of priority quickly and efficiently.”

The backup and catastrophe recovery machine revamp is predicted to rate about £850,000 in 2021/2022, while the storage and virtualisation fragment of the challenge is predicted to rate a total of £550,000 between 2021 and 2025, the Expertise roadmap doc stated.

The local authority will additionally undertake a “additional” £550,000 review of its datacentre web hosting arrangements over the subsequent couple of years with the goal of consolidating the unreal of server farms it operates, “if financially and operationally opportune” to develop so, the doc added.

The council has additionally earmarked £1.5m of funding to say a “chronic programme of work” that can peer to “substitute our dilapidated Microsoft Windows Server working programs with their finite enhance lifetime, so as that the ambiance can also additionally be effectively managed, patched and supported”, in accordance to the doc, and can utilize £300,000 to “refresh” the connectivity and access points to the datacentre community.

Acclaim for the datacentre revamp blueprint develop into as soon as sought all over a council cabinet assembly on 14 June 2021, and the work is a component of a a lot broader £10.3m IT overhaul the local authority is embarking on over the impending years.

Alongside the datacentre toughen, the organisation will additionally be investing in upgrading the networks between its datacentres and council web sites, bettering its cyber security protections, and offering council employees with novel laptops and cellular devices over the subsequent four to 5 years.

The goal of these works, as detailed within the Expertise roadmap 2021-2025 doc, is to toughen the security, resiliency and availability of council products and companies while additionally cutting again the charges fervent with turning in them to local voters.

The challenge is a component of a excellent broader £35m IT investment programme that is being launched into by Brent, Lewisham and Southwark councils by their Shared Expertise Services and products initiative to forestall their programs from being efficiently focused by cyber criminals.

As detailed within the Brent technology roadmap capital investment doc, there’s a particular enviornment about Brent Council’s ability leap encourage from a cyber attack or outage except a brand novel backup and catastrophe recovery machine is rolled out quickly.

“There would possibly maybe be a straight away have to place in force a brand novel backup and catastrophe recovery solution,” stated the doc. “The replacement solution will offer protection to the IT infrastructure and the council’s files from malicious attack, comparable to the one impartial nowadays skilled by one more London borough.

“Within the tournament of an IT failure, the council will seemingly be ready to enhance quickly by imposing changes within the very best plan the ideas is saved.”

Exclaim Continues Beneath