Government Department
Non-compliant wireless environment and not deployed to offer true innovation
Issues: The Government agency had been sold a wireless solution from their 3rd party incumbents who managed their infrastructure. They have been told that they had the right experience and knowledge to deploy wireless for Government use. It transpired that they had never actually deployed one (which at the time had to be deployed in accordance with CESG Manual Y but has now been superseded in accordance with CESG Architectural Pattern No. 12 – Wireless Networking). They had also purchased a number of costly devices and applications that were not required to be deployed.
CNS re-designed the infrastructure to meet CESG Manual Y (and then CESG AP 12). We removed all irrelevant devices and integrated it with their existing infrastructure. This not only meant the management overhead was drastically reduced but also significantly cut support and maintenance costs.
We were also able to deploy it in a number of ways that mean that it could be used across the entire region. This also reduced the costs of 3G and 4G transmissions from vehicles as well. It also gave the Agency the ability to provide data and voice signals where typically there were none.
UK Police Force
Non-compliant infrastructure that was based around non-commercial (open source) or not “main stream” technologies.
Issues: Skills required to manage the environment were with key individuals who carried most of the knowledge around in their heads (e.g. not documented). This became a single point of failure. Additionally when key individuals were sick, on courses or annual leave, the skills within the rest of the team were not to a standard; each time they had an issue (irrespective of how small it was) it took hours to resolve. This effected daily Police operations and was deemed unacceptable.
Additionally the security infrastructure deployed to support this environment did not meet HMG guidelines (such as non CESG CPA encryption, EAL4 firewalls, no “defence-in-depth”) and their RMADS was woefully out of date.
CNS were called in to initially audit the Force’s compliance status. This produced a report that provided some evidence as to the critical state they were in. This resulted in CNS being seconded to site for a year and a half to manage the department as a whole. In that time the CNS consultant managed to resolve all issues and ensure compliance with their CJX CoCo. This included updating all their policies, upgrading the infrastructure in line budget, implementing proper incident handling and staff rotas and provided a compliant remote access solution that enhanced their security perimeter. The CNS consultant also designed and deployed their IL4 (CONFIDENTIAL) infrastructure. They were the first Police Force to be signed off as compliant with the national PND (Police National Database) environment. We also only used around 70% of the budget assigned to the project.