Global Solutions, part of security firm Group 4 Falck, has
outsourced the management of its firewalls, anti-virus systems and
disaster recovery plans to Cable & Wireless in an £8m
deal.
The company said the five-year deal would free up its IT staff and
managers to concentrate on Global Solutions' core businesses. These
include running prisons, young offender institutes, hospital
transport and servicing offices at the GCHQ spy centre.
Phil Bannister, business systems manager at Global Solutions, said
the contract with Cable & Wireless would reduce costs by
providing the firm with a single point of contact for its security
needs, rather than the variety of suppliers it had to deal with
previously.
"We had a range of different companies providing different parts of
the service. We had one company providing a managed firewall
service and another providing internet and anti-virus services," he
said.
"Cable & Wireless was managing our wide area network, but this
was creating challenges because we were co-ordinating our security
across different organisations."
Global Services has commissioned Cable & Wireless to review the
company's security and to make recommendations for any changes or
improvements by the summer.
As part of the contract, Global Services has added anti-spam
technology to its networks, which it said has significantly reduced
the load on the corporate network. It has also begun a programme to
roll out voice over IP telephony.
"One of the benefits of going to Cable & Wireless and the
partnership we have with them is that we can say that we want them
to go away and come back with proposals for security that we will
evaluate. We do not have any specific plans, but we have asked them
to assess our position," said Bannister.
The contract with Cable & Wireless for managed security follows
a deal made in 2000 when Cable & Wireless took over
responsibility for providing the company's fixed data and voice
communications.
Global Services awarded Cable & Wireless the security contract
following a tendering exercise with rival suppliers. Cable &
Wireless agreed to drop its prices after "heavy negotiations", said
Bannister.
Dealing with a single supplier will reduce the number of review
meetings that managers have to attend, Bannister said.
"We can now tell Cable & Wireless what we want to achieve and
they will deal with the details," he said.