NSW Government Agency

Overview

When a new version of Q-Flow^® became available with new security improvements, it was an opportune time to perform a major upgrade for this long-term client of NEXA, Q-nomy's long-time reseller and partner in Australia and NZ, and future-proof both their service and security.

Here’s how the process was rolled out.

The Challenge

Organizations in the public sector are frequently targeted by an ever-growing threat of cyber-attacks while having to ensure service uptime and the integrity of information.

Therefore, the biggest challenge was to design and implement key changes to improve the platform’s security, while ensuring the least disruption to their critical community services. This was especially important given the recent 2021 lockdown and the essential COVID-19 services that end-users were depending on.

The goal of this project was to upgrade their software while taking the opportunity to perform a major infrastructure overhaul.

The Solution

Considering the magnitude and scope of this project, it was important to develop a solution that would address the key requirement of the government agency to implement strong cybersecurity infrastructure that will protect the organization's reputation, while still ensuring customer-facing services were optimized.

After a thorough consultation, NEXA’s project team proposed a three-part solution to address their cybersecurity concerns:

1. A complete software upgrade to apply the latest security updates and UX improvements
2. An infrastructure overhaul to the Cloud so storage and application were hosted together
3. An upgrade to authentication, introducing federated login for Q-Flow, and implementing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).

The Results

Since the completion of the upgrade rollout in late September 2021, the NSW Government agency saw positive results instantly.

As always, the true test of a software upgrade comes once it goes live as this generates end-user data and feedback. Using this data, NEXA was able to respond quickly to initial “teething” issues to ensure that the government agency’s day to day customer operations were not affected by this upgrade.

As with any upgrade for an organization of this size, NEXA ran an extended stabilization period of “hyper care” where the platform is continually monitored and any issue, big or small, is escalated and responded to directly by the project team. The client raised no critical issues throughout the entire hyper care period - a testament to NEXA’s precise design and execution of the project, and to the quality and robustness of Q-nomy's software.