Charity improves security for mobile workers in 38 countries

Charity Marie Stopes International is using an online system to share information between staff and external partners worldwide.

The mobility of staff and strategic partners in 452 centres in 38 countries was the main reason to introduce the system, which helps enables connectivity while on the move.

But there were challenges related to the security and infrastructure aspects of the project, said Marie Stopes IT services manager Perry Roche.

“Since the information sharing systems would be accessed from corporate, domestic and mobile devices, strong access control was essential to ensure that other resources on the corporate network remain protected from unauthorised access," he said .

“And the platform needed to allow the system administrator to define exactly what applications and services each user could access. Another issue was related to access from remote locations where bandwidth connections can be low.”

The problems were managed and the charity has completed the trial for the system successfully.

The software is being rolled out to managers across the organisation providing them with access to the central document store, a collaboration environment, blog facility, chat rooms and other online resources.

Future plans to build on the platform include enabling users to access the network over their mobile phones.

The software was provided by AppGate Network Security.