Protecting public data: North Devon Council boosts security with Veeam resilience

North Devon District Council aims to foster a sustainable, inclusive, prosperous, and healthy community. Its critical services, from waste collection to its support of over 4,000 small businesses, all rely on secure and accessible digital data.

“Like all UK councils, we’ve experienced significant budget cuts over the past decade,” said Andrew Tapp, ICT Manager at North Devon District Council. “Increased demand means we must do more with less, leveraging IT to boost productivity. At the same time, local government reorganization will likely see the North Devon District merge with other districts in the next few years. This presents uncertainty, but also opportunity.”

Recognizing data as the backbone of operations, the council identified gaps in its data resilience strategy; specifically, the need for backup immutability and secure cloud storage.

“North Devon residents are our priority,” said Tapp. “Losing access to our data would jeopardize our service levels, finances, and reputation. With ransomware threats rising, we chose to tackle the challenge head on.”

To maximize data resilience and safeguard public services, North Devon District Council selected Veeam.

“Veeam delivered all the capabilities we needed, from cyber resilience to cloud integration,” said Tapp. “It is excellent value and easy to procure, with attentive support.”

The council protects its entire IT environment with Veeam, safeguarding business-critical applications and 50 TB of data hosted on-premises. Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 secures collaboration tools, currently totaling around 2 TB of data. 

“Deployment of Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 was remarkably smooth — just a couple of days,” said Tapp. “Veeam automatically backs up new SharePoint sites, reducing the risk of human error. With robust data resilience in place, we’re proceeding with a SharePoint and OneDrive migration.”

Using Veeam, the council implements the 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule, creating immutable backups in hardened Linux repositories. Veeam Data Cloud Vault provides air-gapped, cloud-based backups, speeding up recovery and reducing admin workloads.

“With Veeam, we recover our data 50% faster and much more easily,” said Tapp. “When a SharePoint team site was accidently deleted, Veeam’s granular recovery tools restored it seamlessly, which was a big relief all around.”

Switching to Veeam has also helped the council refine its data resilience strategy, with the user-friendly solution supporting more frequent backup windows.

“We now back up twice daily instead of once, reducing the risk of data loss,” said Tapp. “Veeam also cuts our backup times by about 20%, minimizing impact on production systems.”

Today, North Devon District Council is better positioned to meet future challenges, including government reorganization, with Veeam’s immutable backups and rapid recovery providing reassurance.

“With Veeam, we have significantly improved our data resilience; our previous solution doesn’t compare,” said Tapp. “I sleep better knowing Veeam protects the data of North Devon residents.”

• 50% faster data recovery
  Veeam accelerates recovery, ensuring continuity of critical services for North Devon residents.
• 20% shorter backup time
  Efficient, reliable data backups free up IT resources for service innovation.
•  Immutable backups for elevated cyber-resilience
  “Ransomware is a key issue for government IT,” said Tapp. “Immutable backups were a key reason we chose Veeam. They ensure our backups remain safe, even if defenses are breached.”