Case Study - Sacramento County
Sacramento County relies on Kiteworks to ensure employees have secure access to documents, pictures, videos, and forms across all devices, online or offline.
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Sacramento County Sets a Standard for Secure Internal and External Collaboration on Sensitive Content
The County of Sacramento is home to almost 2 million people and the state capital of California. With personnel spanning across more than 30 departments, including Emergency Services, Transportation, Regional Parks, Water Resources, and Sanitation, the county must enable employees to access and collaborate on information when needed—anytime and anywhere.
County employees needed to collaborate on projects and workflows without compromising data security, which can be an issue with unsecure third-party providers like Dropbox and Google Drive. “Name any storage provider and it has a potential for presenting major security risks for county employees,” says Brian Goshorn, senior IT analyst with Sacramento county. “We received a directive from our CIO to find a single, secure solution that could be adopted across all county departments and made the standard for internal and external information sharing.”
“Our goal was to provide secure, universal access to all county files, while keeping the data in-house under our watchful eyes.”
– Brian Goshorn, Senior IT Analyst, County of Sacramento
Seeking a Secure Alternative
When evaluating solutions, the county was focused on three requirements. The number one priority was security; the solution had to have strong security controls and the flexibility to be deployed on-premises via private cloud. Secondly, the solution had to provide seamless access to documents within existing enterprise content systems like SharePoint, but without requiring a VPN for access. Finally, the solution must enable and support true collaboration, helping employees better organize their content, manage tasks, search for content, edit and comment on files, and spearhead workflows and projects.
“Because our content is generated by multiple sources and lives across multiple systems, we wanted to provide a single window of accessibility in order to boost productivity across our departments,” Goshorn explains. “Our goal was to provide secure, universal access to all county files while keeping the data in-house under our watchful eyes.”
Case Study
Sacramento County Sets a Standard for Secure Internal and External Collaboration on Sensitive Content
Scaling to Multiple Use Cases
The county selected Kiteworks as it met each of its requirements. Today Kiteworks syncs county documents, pictures, videos, and forms to ensure employees have secure access to the most current content across all devices, online or offline. With many of the county’s employees out in the field managing rapidly changing situations, Kiteworks also provides employees with around-the-clock content availability to keep projects moving forward, as well as keep partners and constituents well informed.
Here are just some of the ways Kiteworks supports county departments and their secure collaboration efforts:
- Water Resources – This department is undergoing a massive research study, involving numerous county agencies and engineers. The Kiteworks platform serves as the “go-to” solution for sharing documentation and enabling multiple parties to provide feedback and enter additional findings.
- Sanitation District – As part of their regular sewer inspection process, “SacSewer” employees take pictures and shoot videos of the county’s sewer system to monitor the system’s health. These large files are stored and shared using Kiteworks to enable engineers and other county officials to access, review, and troubleshoot necessary repairs.
- Animal Care and Regulation – The county works with its animal shelter to notify the community about lost animals, as well as those available for foster care and adoption. County employees use Kiteworks to share photos of animals, which shelter employees can access as needed.
- Environmental Management – This department’s Plan Review Group leverages Kiteworks to exchange blueprints of facilities that require review and approval. The department also uses Kiteworks to collaborate on Public Records Act (PRA) file requests.
Since deployment, Kiteworks has been adopted by more than 1,400 active users, and that number is growing each day. “The Kiteworks platform is a huge security and efficiency story for us,” Goshorn concludes. “We have achieved the highest levels of data security and control and our employees are able to work smarter and faster with external agencies, vendors, and partners.”
Needs
- Provide a secure alternative to consumer cloud storage providers like Dropbox and Google Drive
- Enable collaboration among county employees in the office and in the field, online or offline
Kiteworks Solution
- Kiteworks secure file sharing for secure collaboration between employees as well as constituents
Business Impact
- Operational efficiency gains achieved by rolling out a single collaboration and file sharing solution countywide
- Mitigating risk of unauthorized access by eliminating less secure consumer file sharing solutions
“The Kiteworks platform is a huge security and efficiency story for us. We have achieved the highest levels of data security and control and our employees are able to work smarter and faster with external agencies, vendors, and partners.”
– Brian Goshorn, Senior IT Analyst, County of Sacramento
