Government migrates to a single, safe and secure network |
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Sat, 06 Aug 2005 19:35
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LONDON: The U.K. government is just about to have its own secure and safe internal IT network. Some 165 government departments are set to log in to the Government Secure Intranet (GSi) program, which is replacing the existing Legacy system.
The system will work as a private network provided by communications company Energis and the connected government departments can communicate through this. The service in its first phase will be available to some 350,000 government staff, including those working in large departments. It allows the government to share information across various departments and between the central government and other U.K. and European government bodies bypassing the public internet. There are peer-level connections between the Criminal Justice eXchange, MoD, NHSNet/N3, EU Council of Ministers and TESTA, the EU network.
| The 60 million pound system has capacity to cater to all the government departments and these departments can opt for various levels of service like the simple peer-to-peer service to anti-spam and content and image control. If there are no major problems in the implementation, the service will be extended to local authorities.
Explaining the need for such a system, Energis' GSi client director Andrew Swaffer said the government is an absolute target for worms, viruses and malware. "What we needed to create was a safe network in which government departments can communicate and operate more efficiently.
"It's a big challenge, but there are business and operational benefits to what we're doing here. The biggest obstacle is that in order to get on board local government has to sort its own systems out first. It's a huge task."
He said 5 per cent of government emails received contain some sort of virus. Dictionary attacks were also cited as a growing threat.
GSi was conceived in 1997, and initially it provided basic messaging and Internet access. The phase that is now over provides users with different levels of access to confidential material. Energis said the network is already handling one million emails daily and in June it blocked one million viruses and quarantined 2.7 million junk emails. The network is voice-enabled and government departments can plan for VoIP systems.
The identity management aspect will be added in the second phase of the network to be implemented in September.
Energis said the first phase was commissioned in 15 months ahead of the deadline and the migration was completed in 18 months. The project, originally valued at 40 million pounds, was enhanced to include higher capacity and doubling of the bandwidth.
Scotland has already commissioned a cross-governmental network called GSx, linking the central government, the DVLA and the TV licensing and Registry Offices.
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