Microsoft SCOM has enabled Milton Keynes Council to monitor it's hardened IT environment and allow connection to the Government Secure Extranet (GCSX) to increase efficiency
The organisation increasingly had to depend on 3rd party organisations such as the police to obtain access to secure information required to effectively perform their role in areas such as proceeds of crime and the justice system. Direct connection to the GCSX network was really the only solution but this created new problems - the whole IT environment needed to be hardened and made more secure.
The recording of user activities to assist in any future investigations was a mandatory point of compliance in the CoCo which was addressed by deploying Microsoft System Centre Operations Manager (MS SCOM) to manage audit log collection.
As well as performing an audit log collection role, Microsoft SCOM improves visibility of the server estate which can lower the infrastructure support costs by allowing IT Management teams to more-easily identify and resolve issues affecting the health of distributed IT Services. Whilst many routine administration processes can be automated, the SCOM environment also delivers intelligent reporting and monitoring that reduces the level of manual effort that traditional monitoring approaches require.
Without the need to leave site to gain access 3rd party information services such as the Police Intelligence network, Council staff can now perform their crime prevention and citizen protection roles in a far more efficient manner as well as ensuring that no additional costs are incurred in the successful delivery of these services.
The Solution
The SCOM solution at Milton Keynes is based on a three server model in a SCOM farm consisting of SQL Server, Management Server and Root Management Server. The Root Management Server was required in order to connect to Gateway Servers situated in the councils existing DMZ and the new, secure Gov Connect Domain via Secure Authentication Certificates as the systems to be monitored were in multiple domains.
Over 200 servers providing a wide variety of functions were added to the SCOM estate and are now being monitored on a numbers of levels as well as the collection of audit logs.
Download the full Milton Keynes SCOM Case Study in PDF.
“ The savings for Trading Standards alone will ensure an immediate ROI and ultimately pay for the project ”
