The Scottish Government Reduces Costs and Ensures Data Security with End-to-End Encryption

33%

TCO savings

60%

Management time savings

6x

Faster backup performance

Overview

The Agriculture and Rural Economy (ARE) Directorate, headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, operates within the Scottish Government and plays a key role in Scotland’s rural economy. As well as interpreting EU regulations and assessing the validity of farmers’ subsidy claims, it is also responsible for paying subsidies directly to farmers. With over 20,000 farmers claiming through ARE each year, the directorate pays out £750m in subsidies annually.

Neill Smith, Head of IT Infrastructure at ARE, oversees the operation infrastructure of 1,300 employees who develop and manage applications for agriculture subsidies, in addition to supporting the 20,000 farmers who submit claims to the directorate each year. This support includes managing identifiable data and meeting strict security and payment standards required by the government.

Smith felt hampered by managing multiple legacy platforms and craved a centralized platform to easily demonstrate security compliance. “We operate in a heavily regulated industry that requires our data management solution to be highly secure and reliable,” said Smith. “Rubrik employs a comprehensive approach to security and ensures our data privacy and safety. This includes end-to-end encryption across our entire on-prem and cloud environment as well as audit capabilities for meeting compliance.”

Rubrik employs a comprehensive approach to security and ensures our data privacy and safety. This includes end-to-end encryption across our entire on-prem and cloud environment as well as audit capabilities for meeting compliance.

Neill Smith
Head of IT Infrastructure at ARE

Featured Product: Rubrik Cloud Data Management

Challenges

Fragmented management with a multi-point legacy architecture
Inability to scale with data growth
Difficulty ensuring all backups were secure and encrypted

Results

33% TCO savings
60% management time savings
6x faster backup performance
79% data reduction
Near-zero RTOs

The Solution

Comprehensive security with end-to-end encryption and audit trails
Instant recovery
Seamless integration with AWS S3 for cloud mobility
RESTful APIs to automate workflows at scale

Challenges

Lack of scale and security with legacy solution

Prior to Rubrik, Smith relied on multiple backup solutions, which was difficult for his team to manage. “Our legacy solution was not user-friendly,” said Smith. “It may have been innovative several years ago, but hadn’t kept up with where the market was going.”

ARE also continuously develops new applications that support the growing number of farmers applying for subsidies. To keep up with this growth, Smith and his team needed a data management solution that would easily scale while also protecting their mission-critical data. “We previously relied on fragmented multipoint solutions that lacked scalability. On top of that, it was difficult to ensure all of our backups were encrypted. Our legacy solution did not guarantee end-to-end encryption, which made proving compliance cumbersome,” said Smith.

Smith and his team were immediately sold on Rubrik. “Rubrik more than exceeded our expectations. It smashed our security requirements right out of the box,” said Smith. “The install was easy and straightforward. We also liked that Rubrik provides a single pane of glass to easily manage policies for all our workloads.”

We previously relied on fragmented multi-point solutions that lacked scalability. On top of that, it was difficult to ensure all of our backups were encrypted. Our legacy solution did not guarantee end-to-end encryption, which made proving compliance cumbersome.

Neill Smith
Head of IT Infrastructure at ARE

Solutions

Comprehensive security for compliance and protection

By switching to Rubrik, ARE centralized its data management and ensured high levels of security across the organization’s entire infrastructure. “Our directorate is prone to multiple audits every year to ensure our compliance with strict security mandates. Rubrik has significantly simplified the auditing process by being designed from the ground up with end-to-end security,” said Smith. “In our industry, the rules and regulations are constantly evolving. We must be able to implement solutions that meet new requirements in the blink of an eye—otherwise we could be subject to millions of pounds worth of fines. Rubrik’s flexibility supports this through its single policy engine. We can easily change and apply policies across our environment to meet the required SLAs.”

Overall, Rubrik has significantly outperformed ARE’s previous solutions when it comes to security requirements. “The platform automatically delivers end-to-end encryption for data both in-flight and at-rest. In addition to protecting our mission-critical data, it allows us to easily demonstrate security compliance with audit trails,” said Smith.

Our directorate is prone to multiple audits every year to ensure our compliance with strict security mandates. Rubrik has significantly simplified the auditing process by being designed from the ground up with end-to-end security.

Neill Smith
Head of IT Infrastructure at ARE

Featured: Rubrik CDM

The Results

Delivering cost-savings, high-performance, and public cloud integration

The Scottish Government uses Rubrik to protect VMware, Windows, and Linux workloads for their virtual and physical environments. Other benefits include:

33% TCO savings and 60% management time savings

“Managing Rubrik is so much simpler than our legacy solution. Since implementing Rubrik, we’ve experienced 60% management time savings and 33% TCO savings.”

6x faster backup performance

“We are seeing much higher backup performance with Rubrik. Our backups are six times faster than our previous solution.”

79% data reduction

“Rubrik has maximized our storage efficiency—we have experienced 79% data reduction.”

Near-zero RTOs

“Rubrik allows us to easily setup replication policies. In the event of a disaster, we have the ability to recover without impacting our performance. Previously, our average recovery could take up to 40 minutes. Now it’s less than one minute with Rubrik.”

Rack-and-go

“Rubrik was up and running right out of the box and auto-discovered our entire environment. We simply set our SLAs with a few swipes and clicks, and Rubrik took care of the rest.”

Seamless cloud integration with AWS S3

“The Scottish Government is excited to embrace public cloud, so all our new projects must have a cloud-first approach. One deciding factor for choosing Rubrik was its seamless cloud integration. We are currently trialing Rubrik with AWS S3 integration via a proof-of-concept (POC). This is just the beginning of our cloud usage. Rubrik will be instrumental in our journey as we continue to on-ramp to cloud.”

Global search for file-level restore

“Rubrik’s Google-like search enables us to easily locate all of our data. We can easily perform point-in-time restores down to the file for instant recovery.”

Policy-based management

“Before switching to Rubrik, we relied on multiple legacy solutions to backup our data. Now, we can automate protection across our entire environment through a single policy engine. When we add a new VM, the system automatically discovers it and applies the appropriate policies.”

API-driven automation

“We’re excited to take advantage of Rubrik’s RESTful APIs to further automate our workflows in the future. This was not available with our previous solution.”