Case Study: Guildford Borough Council achieves stronger information security and regulatory compliance with Fortra

Delivering Information Security For Guildford Borough Council

Guildford Borough Council’s Business Systems team — a 45‑person unit supporting over 800 users across 15 services — faced rising demands from partnership working, flexible SharePoint‑based remote access and an increase in Freedom of Information requests. These changes risked exposing sensitive data and had to be balanced against legal and regulatory obligations (CoCo, GPMS, Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts), so the team decided protective marking was essential and sought software to enforce consistent adoption where process or training alone would not suffice.

The council implemented Boldon James Email Classifier and Office Classifier to apply visual protective markings embedded in document and email metadata, integrated with Microsoft Outlook/Office and existing encryption tools. Rolled out first within the Business Systems team and then softly across the organisation, the solution improved staff and partner awareness, enforced information‑sharing policies, provided documentary evidence of compliance and enabled the council to leverage existing encryption, archiving and storage investments while supporting partnership and flexible working.

Guildford Borough Council

Steve Wragge-Morley

Head of Business Systems