33%
60%
6x
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.
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.
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.
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: