Securing the Public Sector: Our Journey in Delivering Information Security Services

• by Anthony Orjally
• Advent IM Blog

Advent IM has a longstanding relationship with the UK Government and has been a trusted security consultancy provider to many Government departments over its twenty-year history. 

MySecurityManager – Solving the problem: Interim role of Information Security Manager for a Government Body 

Our client was already engaged with us for years, mostly for accreditation work. However, they asked us to additionally cover a contract break interim need and ISM recruitment period and support the client’s information security team. Our client felt appointing us to cover this gap was s the natural extension of our current partnership as trusted providers. Our client was finding it very challenging to recruit a genuine expert, who had the requisite skills, knowledge, and experience. They needed a rounded, specialist advisor for information security matters and we were asked to remain in post for the foreseeable future.  

Key features of our engagement: 

• Proactivity 
• Engagement with heads of departments, project teams and senior leadership 
• Constant and consistent pool of experts 
• High standard of knowledge, efficiency, and professionalism 
• Fast response, solutions and turnaround of problems 
• Representation in meetings 
• Problem solving outside of IS team too 
• Raised the profile of the security team 
• Third party supplier engagement  
• Supported cultural change 
• Consistent positive feedback to senior leaders about our engagement 

MySecurityManager provides interim security management excellence by a trusted and proven team. No holiday or sick pay, no pension and you only ever pay for the time you actually use. 

More details: advent-im.co.uk/mysecuritymanager  

Advent IM Outsourced Solutions – Solving the problem: security backlog, projects delayed, internal resource redeploy – Large Government Department 

A government client approached us about scaling up our skills provision. They had been impressed with our traditional security consultancy and wanted the same high standard, at scale and across a broad range of security project needs, all delivered to the high standard they were accustomed to. Government departments then, have been among the first to use our new offering, Advent IM Outsourced Solutions.  

Our client had a security backlog to clear, projects to get on track and they needed their own valuable in-house expertise to be deployed elsewhere. But after a period of trying to manage this complex situation internally, they realised they had the best possible solution working onboard with them. A proven and flexible supplier that had an impeccable security pedigree with government and public sector bodies going back decades. 

Key features of our engagement: 

• Oversight of Advent IM Managing Consultant; 

• Responsibility for initial inducting, project assignment and overseeing their work through to conclusion while also working on some projects himself. 

• Reduction of security backlog 
• Flexible skills at point of need 
• Project reinvigoration and completion 
• Valuable internal resource could therefore be redirected 
• The Department found this a most satisfactory arrangement as it save considerable time and effort. In fact, this delivery model was deemed so successful the Department adopted it for all contractor engagement thereafter. 

We delivered over 200 projects for our client using our carefully curated pool of trusted, appropriately certified, skilled, and proven expertise, always retaining a senior security professional oversight. Outsourced Solutions provides the excellence they had come to expect from the Advent IM brand, but at scale. We can handle an individual, multiple or even a project team with management. We can manage surge requirements and escalation and offer a one contact/one contract approach that simplifies processes, creates efficiencies and meets agility requirements. 

More details: advent-im.co.uk/outsourcedsolutions