Mimecast helps Aftercare focus on its mission, not its email

At A Glance

• Legislative and organisational changes had pushed Aftercare into a period of rapid change
• An existing consumer-grade antivirus solution wasn’t providing adequate security
• Mimecast was introduced to standardise email protection and archiving during the IT transformation
• Better reporting and visibility provide confidence that the data is secured and regulatory requirements are being met
• Expanded use of Mimecast services will lock down the flow of sensitive information into and out of the organisation
• As one of Australia’s three free-to-air TV broadcast services, Network 10 operates a fast-moving media environment that relies on online collaboration amongst its 1,200 employees

Challenge

Social-services organisation Aftercare faced challenges in providing secure, effective tools and services to support its nearly 1000-strong, diverse and distributed workforce. Organic growth and significant changes in legislation, such as the introduction of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), had put new pressure on its legacy systems and highlighted areas of weakness that left its information security with gaps.

As with most organisations, spam, phishing, and impersonation emails were creating issues and the existing, consumer-grade antivirus software was not keeping up and were helpless against malware-less attacks. With an aim to modernising its supporting infrastructure and gradually moving to embrace cloud computing, Aftercare’s IT team set about looking for a solution that would improve its messaging security, visibility, and control.

“We have had a lot of sector-based change due to NDIS and various external factors that are causing us to change direction,” explains Jason Fairweather, IT Manager at Aftercare. “We hold medical records and confidential client information that we need to protect. It’s essential for IT to be able to support the organisation through this change, but we have had an old IT environment and a lot of challenges around information security.”

Solution

Evaluating options led Aftercare to adopt Mimecast’s email security service, which it installed to secure the organisation’s existing Microsoft Exchange environment. The choice of Mimecast was based on its ability to improve the visibility and security of the organisation’s email flows, with features such as URL inspection and Impersonation Protect providing extra layers of assurance.

Extensive reporting features include deep details about what kind of emails and attachments are being received and blocked. In a recent month, for example, 90 percent of incoming emails turned out to be spam or other unwanted messages.

Regular staff training has helped ensure a smooth transition to the Mimecast technology. Its cloud-based architecture has helped Aftercare deliver the solution to its widely dispersed workforce – which includes around 400 entirely-mobile workers that access their messages and applications from the field using mobile devices.

Building on its success in improving email security, Aftercare more recently implemented the Mimecast Cloud Archive for Email, providing a cloud-based archive of its communications that supports broader requirements around business continuity and cyber resilience.

“We have been looking for better ways to control email archiving, and to remove the day-to-day burden or risk off our end users and provide archiving services purely from the back end,” Fairweather explains. “The Mimecast Archive service is a really promising system for our teams, and it has been really fast and efficient. Much like all of the Mimecast tools, as soon as you touch it you start to trust it.

Summary

Strong support from Mimecast, both in the lead up to Aftercare’s migration and in the ongoing relationship between the organisations, has convinced Fairweather that he made the right choice. Mimecast has not only provided an email security platform that will grow along with Aftercare, but it has provided peace of mind that the company’s information-management obligations are being met.

“We’ve been very happy with what Mimecast is providing us. It’s black and white in terms of other vendors that are mass-marketing products; Mimecast has that personal touch and they have been interested in our success. This has helped ensure the platform meets our needs, and has allowed us to focus on other areas of the IT stack. ”

Jason Fairweather, IT Manager, Aftercare