Sungard gains IL3 accreditation

Sungard® Availability Services has received the Pan Government Accreditation (PGA) for Impact Level 3 (IL3), for its private cloud infrastructure. Being one of only a few companies to offer a fully managed, IL3 accredited cloud platform, Sungard AS can support organisations in the adoption of a flexible and hybrid cloud solutions. This solution can bridge across different levels of security via an accredited Gateway, including IL2 (for citizen facing requirements) and IL3. This accreditation will also ensure that customers can meet government criteria for new ‘Official’ and ‘Official Sensitive’ security levels, which will combine both IL2 and IL3.

By partnering with Sungard AS, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) will benefit from delta accreditation and PGA status by demonstrating that their applications can run on Sungard AS’ IL3 platform. Consultancy and support from Sungard AS will also speed up the accreditation process for ISVs who may have limited levels of skilled retationsources. Customers and partners will also benefit from secure Public Services Network (PSN) connectivity.

The government has committed to a goal that 25% of its expenditure will be with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by 2015. Sungard AS has already partnered with a number of ISVs, which sit within the SME bracket, to deliver application based services to help police forces across the UK to reduce crime and protect victims. Forces are able to deliver connected services while reducing operational overheads through managed services. Furthermore, the highest level of application and data security is assured through a secure infrastructure, VPN and management networks and tools.

Simon Gordon, Chairman of Facewatch, the online crime reporting and intelligence sharing platform said: “We are working closely with police forces across the UK to enable efficiencies by providing them with full evidential digital crime reports from the private sector. Working with Sungard AS will enable us to create an IL3 accredited Facewatch platform for certain elements of the police investigation tools we provide. With Sungard AS we will be able to provide a fully shareable Software as a Service security solution for the police which will include a secure bridge between IL2 and IL3 and the PSN. Ultimately this will increase efficiencies across the UK’s police forces while enabling us to share data between mobile applications and the police as quickly and securely as possible.”

Charles James, Creative Director at FISH Digital Forensics Ltd said: “Partnering with Sungard AS has opened up new doors for us which were previously closed due to strict IL3 requirements. We are only a small company, but being powered by Sungard AS with the underlying Cisco and NetApp technology demonstrates that we can offer a highly resilient and secure platform to manage government forensics and will enable us to provide a shared and standardised forensics platform for all police forces across the UK.”

Keith Tilley, European Vice President, EMEA & APAC, Sungard Availability Services said: “In a bid to achieve Digital by Default standards and support the shared services agenda, the government framework policy has had to shift dramatically. Both new and established application providers now have a huge opportunity to expand service delivery to the public sector. However, these services still require high security accreditation across both the application and the platform level, and partnering with companies like Sungard AS enables ISVs to provide a level of accredited security and management for their software’s hosting platform which wasn’t previously easily accessible – opening up wider procurement opportunities and more efficient and secure processes within the public sector.”

Sungard AS’ managed services offering is based on integrated infrastructure FlexPod technology from Cisco and NetApp. It includes round-the-clock support and system monitoring from its public sector IL3 service management and operations teams, enabling organisations to retain control over their applications without the burden of managing the underlying infrastructure. Additional data security is provided by a dual site option with automatic failover for added resilience, while integrated disaster recovery eliminates the need for tape back-ups.