HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, UK--(Marketwire - March 2, 2009) - The Youth Justice Board for England and
Wales (YJB) has completed an 18-month project to wire up youth justice and
provide a secure communications network between its 30,000 practitioners
operating from more than 200 sites across England and Wales. The resulting
network allows youth justice practitioners to share relevant data as and
when required in order to make better informed decisions regarding action
to be taken. The network sees secure crypto boxes (AEP Net) implemented at
all locations, linked to a hub ensuring restricted level security for
communications between connected individuals and organizations. It
replaces a largely manual set of processes that relied heavily on fax
transmissions and hand delivery of files.
Commenting on the new network, Mike Mackay, CIO of the YJB, says, "It's
hard to achieve consistency when you are not dealing with real-time data.
Eighteen months ago youth justice used a mix of fax and physical
communications, which meant that risk data was not always available where
it was needed. With the network operating, the correct information can be
where it needs to be to make sure that decisions on young offenders are
appropriate and timely. Now we have established a secure network with all
the data flowing through our hub that connects to the Government Secure
Intranet (GSi). We have also built a management information system that
means that we can look at trends and national statistics in more detail.
This is incredibly valuable to us today and moving forward."
The aim of the network is to assist in achieving the right decisions at
every stage of the youth offender's journey through the system. The
network sits outside the GSi network, but inter-operates with it, providing
secure communications to all parties involved in youth justice. It
provides much improved communications by linking existing applications and
uses the internet to reduce implementation time scales and dramatically
lower the cost of the project, while functionality and ROI are maximized.
And, full visibility is available across the process.
Mackay concludes, "When you have 20 or 30 thousand unconnected
practitioners in 200 organizations trying to share data on young people who
offend and you don't have a massive budget to achieve it, then you need a
radically new approach. And, our approach is a radical departure for a
public program. We knew that the way forward was to move from using open
information on individually secured networks to a system where secured
information is communicated across multiple networks and the internet which
already connects our many organizations. We wanted to exploit
cryptographic technology and the internet to achieve a highly secure
network that could be up and running quickly and keep cost down to a
minimum without compromising security. AEP Networks is a central part of
this system, delivering the security that we need to guarantee safe
delivery of sensitive personal data."
About Youth Justice Board
1. The Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB) oversees the youth
justice system in England and Wales. They work to prevent offending and
reoffending by children and young people under the age of 18, and to
ensure that custody for them is safe, secure, and addresses the causes
of their offending behaviour.
2. On behalf of the youth justice system, the YJB established an
ICT-enabled business change programme, Wiring Up Youth Justice, in 2006
to explore how complex information-sharing requirements across hundreds
of organisations could best be achieved.
3. 2009/10 is the final year of the Wiring Up Youth Justice programme. A
number of information-sharing products and services have been delivered
which greatly improve the quality and security of information-sharing
across youth justice. Please visit www.wiringupyouthjustice.info or
call the programme communications office on 0207 654 3488 for further
information.
About AEP Networks
AEP Networks offers secure communications and networking for government,
enterprise and carriers. We work with systems integrators, managed service
providers and the distribution channel to deliver integrated solutions
incorporating our leading edge products:
-- Enhanced-grade secure voice and multi-service data platforms (based on
the vadOS operating system) that support a wide range of communications
protocols and network topologies
-- High assurance networking via IPSec-based VPN encryptors for site-to-
site security and remote access
-- Secure remote access to networks and applications -- including virtual
environments -- via application-layer security gateways and SSL VPNs
-- Hardware Security Modules (HSM) for cryptographic key management and
storage.
Headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey, AEP Networks has key hub offices in
the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Australia. For more information, visit
www.aepnetworks.com.