Northdoor comment:
As G-Cloud enters its 12th iteration, Northdoor is delighted to offer the public sector seven IT solutions via the framework
Northdoor has announced that it is an approved supplier of data management and protection solutions on G-Cloud 12 . Introduced in 2012 and now in its 12th iteration, the G-Cloud framework is designed to give public sector organisations access to smaller, more agile and innovative IT firms offering a wide variety of IT solutions.
G-Cloud offers opportunities for smaller IT providers and local government
Access to these types of companies had been difficult for many public sector organisations prior to G-Cloud, with the IT procurement landscape dominated by a small number of global IT players. Since its inception there has been £6.2bn worth of sales through the framework of which 44% was awarded to SMEs. A majority of the business has come from central Government departments with take up slower amongst local government and the wider sector.
The latter two sectors have seen some improvement in awareness over the past couple of years, but there remains work to be done to educate these sectors as to the benefits of the framework. This will be especially important over the next few months as the public sector begins to find its feet and settle into new working patterns as a result of the pandemic. The pressure on all government departments during 2020 has been huge, but IT solutions are helping to ensure that public sector bodies can continue to offer the best possible front-line services.
Northdoor is committed to engaging with the wider sector and educating those that are not familiar with G-Cloud about the benefits and the ease of procuring through the platform.
Seven services on offer via Bramble Hub
Northdoor’s inclusion in G-Cloud 12 means that public sector bodies can procure services rapidly, transparently and cost-effectively via Bramble Hub, which helps connect small business and public sector ICT contracts.
Northdoor’s Data Management Supplier services include:
- Consolidation to a single golden copy of data for Test/Dev/DR requirements
- Deploy, support and optimise Oracle Hyperion or IBM Cognos business-intelligence solutions
- Discover, classify and protect personal and sensitive data
- Mask/pseudonymise data securely, in an auditable manner at low cost
Data Masking in the public sector
One of the seven services included on G-Cloud 12 from Northdoor will be Data Masking /pseudonymisation technology. This can provide a key solution to public sector organisations that are looking to safeguard personal and sensitive information.
Such is the nature of much of the data held by government departments and the complex regulatory landscape in which the sector sits, ensuring data is secure is crucial. This has been elevated by the fact that much of the public-sector workforce is now working at home, increasing the vulnerability of many departments.
Data Masking allows organisations to:
- Rapidly deliver fully masked/pseudonymised data sets
- Mask data from an extensive range of structured data sources
- Create new and unique reference codes in an automated manner for each run of a report
- Use in-built custom routines to mask, blank, anonymise or partially anonymise user data as needed
Essentially this means that public sector organisations can hide original, sensitive data with modified content to ensure protection. This is critical at a time where cyber-criminals are upping their efforts and the levels of sophistication to try and cause a breach and access such data. Ensuring that the data is masked means that it holds very little value to a criminal helping to secure personal and sensitive data.
This is obviously an important tool for the public sector in particular to consider and accessing it through the G-Cloud framework means that the procurement process is simplified. All government departments, but particularly local government and the wider sector, should be looking at the framework and the huge number of incredible solutions and companies included on it. This will help the sector to ramp up its IT across the board, creating security, efficiencies and driving innovation, all of which helps with the front-line services they provide, which are more critical than ever.