The Organisation: Oasis’s 25-Year Commitment to Supporting Abuse Survivors
Oasis has been working to support people affected by abuse for over 25 years. In this time, Oasis has developed guiding principles that shape the way we work. At the front and centre of our work is a client-first, recovery-focused approach
The Challenge: Addressing Server End-of-Life and GDPR Compliance Amid Financial Constraints
Oasis is one of Qlic longest standing clients. Their existing infrastructure is server based and the server was coming to end of life and needed replacing. The organisation also needed to implement best practice for GDPR.
Oasis had recently fallen on hard times due a drop-in government funding and several difficult internal changes and therefore available funding for any upgrades to their infrastructure was minimal.
Our Approach: Strategic IT Solutions and Funding Guidance for Oasis
Qlic, being familiar with the charity and the way they work, recommended that Oasis apply for the National Lottery Awards for All funding. The Big Lottery Fund offers grants between £300 and £10,000 to support charities and not-for-profit who deliver services that matter to people and communities.
The funding can cover:
- equipment
- one-off events
- small capital projects
- staff costs
- training costs
- transport
- utilities/running costs
- volunteer expenses.
National Lottery Awards for All has three funding priorities. The funding must also meet at least one of these priorities:
- bringing people together and building strong relationships in and across communities
- improving the places and spaces that matter to communities
- enabling more people to fulfil their potential by working to address issues at the earliest possible stage.
Using our knowledge of both the charity and the funding programme Qlic met with Oasis to discuss what solution was best for their organisation. The recommendation involved changing how they worked and moving them across to SharePoint. This recommendation not only had significant advantages over their current server-based solution in terms of remote working, it was also a significant step towards meeting the GDPR guidelines.
Qlic also advised that Oasis should get Cyber Essentials Certified, a Government backed cyber security initiative, which provides five security controls that, according to the UK government, could prevent around “85% of cyber-attacks”. Part of this would involve installing a Sophos UTM (Unified Threat Management) which would offer all in one protection for their network, wireless, email and devices.
The Results: Enhanced Security, Flexibility, and IT Efficiency for Oasis
The migration over to Office 365 SharePoint and OneDrive not only improved their security and user access policies, but also enabled more flexible working and staff members can now access their files when ‘on the go’. This optimised their business continuity and efficiency.
The New Server Hardware which was implemented gave The Brandon Centre the latest Microsoft operating system with improvements in security, network performance and efficiency.
The installation of a Sophos UTM Firewall meant that The Brandon Centre gained zero-day threat protection and bit-level malware & virus filtering.
New Desktop Hardware meant that their user functionality was faster and improved significantly, along with this they gained Microsoft software and security patch ongoing support to assist them.
The Brandon Centre also had the added peace of mind as our service desk was on-hand with fast responses and fixed issues in the event of any problems with their devices or IT infrastructure.
With GDPR on the horizon, and with a growing requirement in our sector for peripatetic working, we needed to secure funding to overhaul and better secure our IT infrastructure. In February 2018, on Qlic’s suggestion and with their support, we made an application to Big Lottery’s Awards For All scheme for the sum of £10,000.00. Adam’s guidance on our bid was honest, smart and straightforward, identifying ways to strengthen our application, from changes of emphases to full redrafts and he supported us through each step of the application process. We were duly awarded the full £10,000.00 and the improvements we’ve been able to make have greatly extended the mobility and reach of our service, and the integrity and efficiency of our systems.
Great service!
