What we learned from Veeam’s latest white paper: “Freedom of Information Report: An authority on data protection for local government”.

With GDPR and increasing cyber threats, keeping public service and government data safe is a top priority. Many organisations have several challenges that need to be overcome on their Digital Transformation journey including reliance on legacy systems, skills gaps, and performance concerns.   You may remember early last year the Cabinet Office’s letter to all public sector Chief Executives which was closely followed by updates from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The message was clear. 

Back up is no longer enough 

If data is one of the most critical assets for regional and local government agencies, then protecting it is the first step in effectively managing it. Emerging cyberthreats and ransomware are putting the civil service under immense pressure, on top of their day-to-day tasks of meeting strict industry regulations and protecting sensitive public data.  

Satnam Jassal, Trustmarque's Education and Local Government Sales Manager

“Ransomware is no longer a question of “if” but “when”. Barely a week goes by where a cyber-attack hasn’t made national news, with a number of high-profile attacks having made global headlines in 2021. In recent times there have been two high-profile cyber-attacks on UK local councils. These attacks caused widespread damage to both of these councils. In one example, the financial impact was £8.7m, with IT systems being down for a week resulting in the local population losing access to essential public services. There’s also potential for complex long-term restoration of IT systems, meaning a cyber-attack can have ramifications far beyond the initial attack and recovery of data. Trustmarque are working with Veeam to protect backup data from cyber attacks, whilst also ensuring ransomware-free backups. Our partnership helps to protect our local government customers’ backups to defend their critical data.”

Hear from over 100 local authorities  

In their most recent white paper, “Freedom of Information Report: An authority on data protection for local government”, Veeam got unprecedented access to local authorities. Amongst other things, they asked them what types of data they store, data protection technologies they deploy, how they test and update data protection protocols and the challenges to data protection they face. 

The findings

In conclusion, Veeam believe many councils are not taking advantage of the technology solutions available to alleviate this pressure, instead of relying on time-intensive and incomprehensive data protection processes.   So, what modern technologies should local government and central government agencies be looking to acquire, and how can they tighten their data security measures?  

Report highlights 

112 local authorities’ responses contributed to this report

32% of councils have experienced unplanned IT outages in the last 12 months

62% use a third-party supplier to back up Office 365 data

About Trustmarque’s partnership with Veeam 

At Trustmarque, we provide innovative data management and protection solutions for any workload, wherever your data resides; from core to edge to cloud. Cloud Data Management provides a modern data protection solution that unblocks potential failures and delivers the results you need to succeed.  We are proficient in Veeam products and solutions, we offer well-managed and modern data protection which can provide the foundation for many benefits, like driving faster innovation, delivering lower costs, increasing automation and reusing intelligence and data.  

Veeam FOI report

Download your copy of the full report 

Click on the link below to download the full version of the white paper,“Freedom of Information Report: An authority on data protection for local government” to find out more about Veeam’s recommendations. N.B. the link takes you to a form where you will be required to provide some basic information about yourself in order to receive the report.

Written by Julia Bluckert, content with content