The benefits of fully managed hosting for youth offending teams

Storing, maintaining and securing data can be expensive and inflexible if you choose to host it onsite. This is why we’re seeing a number of youth offending teams moving away from onsite hosting and opting for outsourced fully managed hosting off premise. Besides efficiencies of cost and effort, outsourcing is enabling teams to be fully compliant and secure.

Moving your data to the cloud brings about numerous benefits for youth offending services. From a commercial standpoint, it means that youth offending teams can switch the expense of hosting from a capital expenditure to an operational expenditure, freeing up vital funds for improving outcomes for young people in your care.

From a security standpoint, it makes managing data a lot easier, too. By leveraging the spend of larger hosting specialists, you are in a stronger position to secure your data. For example, Microsoft spends in excess of $1bn every year on security, which most firms leverage through use of Microsoft applications. That sort of budget simply isn’t available to youth offending teams, so it makes sense to leverage the spend of larger operators.

Security patching is another element of hosting that a fully managed solution can relieve you of. The threat of your data being breached is an evolving one which requires near constant updates to your framework. Again, by leveraging the spend of a specialist solution your security is constantly being updated. At CACI, we run regular stress and penetration tests internally and via external agencies to keep us one step ahead of the game, keeping ours and our clients’ data secure. This is one of the reasons that we are trusted to deliver to highly secure government and local government hosting solutions, many of which use our G-Cloud 10 hosting solution which is available to youth services.

This provides peace of mind that your data is safe. It also provides you with flexible access to it. If, for example, a disaster scenario occurs and your onsite solution gets damaged, how will you recover the data? A fully managed hosting solution will have you back up and running in no time. It’s also useful, during times such as a global pandemic when staff are likely to be based away from the office, for there to be a single access point which enables your service to keep running by maintaining the provision of requisite data to your team.

Such flexibility also extends through your operations. Where you need to integrate your data with third party applications, you can simply plug it in and go. For example, if you’re looking to utilise or expand your use of mobile portals or apps, you can run your data through these easily. This will help to support future initiatives of joined-up, multi-agency approaches to youth justice. All this means that you can continue to adapt and evolve your services, empowering you to provide the best possible service and outcomes on the front line.

If you’re considering moving to a fully managed hosting solution, or you would like more information on CACI’s fully managed hosting solution for youth offending teams, visit our ChildView page.