The Positive Place
- This small charity needed a highly secure but cost-effective IT infrastructure.
- visit The Positive Place website
The Positive Place (TPP) are a small registered charity, providing support services to people who's lives have been affected by HIV and AIDS in London. TPP approached Octavia to asses their current IT system, make recommendations and augment their existing infrastructure and IT-security.
Although TPP had a limited budget, the highly confidential nature of their work meant that a highly secure IT environment was required.
We started this process by completing an audit on their network, taking into account all aspects from software and hardware to email and internet connectivity. After assessing the gathered information, it became apparent that The Positive Place needed a general overhaul and upgrade of many of their IT components.
TPP had a simple Peer to Peer network with files shared on different PC's, no central security policy, no data redundancy in case of computer failure, no company wide email repository and a range of different Anti-Virus products.
Our first task was to provide TPP with a server to provide a solution to all of the issues above plus a whole range of others.
We advised an entry level Dell PowerEdge server running Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 for email, and Sophos Small Business Suite to protect their network from malicious threats. As TPP are a registered charity we managed to negotiate a generous discount on the major software packages for the project thereby saving TPP considerable costs.
The server system was built at the Octavia offices to reduce disruption and then relocated to the TPP office in preparation for the domain implementation. Once the server was networked and running we then upgraded some of the PC's from Windows XP Home Edition to Windows XP Professional to enable them to join the domain and gain all the benefits that this brings, such as enhanced security and centralised file storage.
All the company data from several different PC's across the network was than amalgamated into one central location, organised into a logical file structure and varying levels of permissions were applied to this structure providing granular control to different users to all the separate files and folders.
Once all the files and folders had been organised we set up a daily schedule for the company data and critical system file to be backed up to tape on a daily basis. For this we utilised the inbuilt backup software in the Windows operating system. With instructions to store the tapes off-site this now gave TPP a comprehensive, secure and safe company data depository.
The server was then configured to act as their SMTP mail server. They all had separate POP3 accounts with one ISP, but all the PC's were picking up their own email and storing them in differing locations on the PC's. The server was configured to collect all the email form the ISP, download it and store it in the MS Exchange database structure producing a manageable email hierarchy. Enhancing this further Exchange Public Folders were created which TPP utilised for calendar and contact sharing.
In conjunction with the streamlining of the email system we upgraded their internet provision (ADSL) to a business service with one of our partners; Spitfire Technology. This gave TPP a resilient and secure connection to the internet for their growing business needs.
Finally, now we were sure that TPP were working securely, safely and to the parameters they required, we further enhanced the working ability by providing certain users with secure remote access via VPN to their email and files.
Following successful completion of the project, TPP signed up to Octavia's Flexisupport service for their on going IT-support and maintenance needs.
