Enhancing IT Operations at International Cat Care

Company Overview

International Cat Care is a cat welfare charity that has been challenging cruelty, ignorance and misunderstanding to affect positive change in the lives of cats since 1958. They have built relationships with vets and vet nurses/technicians, boarding catteries, breeders, other charities, corporations, volunteers, owners, and cat lovers and continue to work with them to improve the physical health, mental wellbeing, and the lives of cats everywhere.

Their vision is for “a cat friendly world” and they strive to share expert knowledge and create engaging learning experiences to motivate change and inspire more people to understand and care for cats. Their activities are grounded in evidence and experience – balancing the tried and tested with the latest scientific research, and challenging ignorance and misconceptions.

Client: International Cat Care
Industry: Charity
Services: IT Support and Consultancy Services, Data Security

Our Challenge

International Cat Care had been growing over a number of years with more funding, staff, and devices. Whilst this growth was positive for the charity, it did lead to concerns around their IT Security and, particularly, the access of data between staff and trustees, as the charity expanded. This meant there was a need to review what was in place, as well as what could be introduced to increase their security posture. This also offered them the opportunity to introduce better ways of working across the charity and increase their overall efficiency through new IT practices.

Prior to reaching out to Vissensa, all IT was handled in-house, so they were looking for a trustworthy and reliable IT support partner to assist with their day-to-day IT operations and resolve IT issues more quickly than before. Choosing IT support also helped them to alleviate the internal pressure of resolving IT issues in-house.

Our Solutions

After we were contacted by International Cat Care, Vissensa proposed our Service Desk, which offers industry leading SLAs with our Block Hours service, to help provide flexible support to the charity and users as and when any IT issues arise.

An audit was performed to help the charity understand their current IT landscape and security posture, providing recommendations on what could be introduced to make them more secure and efficient. Vissensa’s unique Configuration Summary Document (CSD) was also created for the charity as part of the audit/review to give insight into these recommendations.

To follow this up, Vissensa began working towards Cyber Essentials with International Cat Care (achieved through using the CyberSmart Cyber Essentials tooling) to help the charity achieve the certification and promote to both staff, trustee, and members that they have taken the necessary steps to help increase their IT security status, and work towards government recommended standards.

Benefits

The solutions we have implemented have seen many benefits for International Cat Care. Starting with our Service Desk – this has resolved issues more swiftly than before by allowing the charity to call or email the service desk team for all IT-related issues. These issues can then be addressed by our team of experts to ensure minimal disruption to operations, keeping the charities processes running smoothly.

The audit and the Configuration Summary Document have allowed the charity to understand their current IT landscape. It has provided the visibility to help increase their IT security posture while also helping future road mapping of their IT.

Achieving the Cyber Essentials certification is a very beneficial practice that we have helped International Cat Care to obtain. It allows them to promote to relevant stakeholders around their focus on IT security across the charity, especially regarding personal data, showing that they promote best practice around security policies, systems, and services.