In the Spotlight: Waltham Forest College

Background

Cybersecurity is no longer an abstract IT concern for the UK’s further education (FE) sector, it’s a strategic priority. Educational institutions are facing an environment of increasing cyber risk, tighter budgets, and growing expectations from insurers and regulators to demonstrate operational resilience.

For Waltham Forest College, a medium-sized institution in London serving more than 7,000 students, those pressures came to a head when its legacy backup and disaster recovery (DR) systems could no longer keep pace with modern demands. What followed was a comprehensive rethink of how the college protected, managed, and recovered its critical data, and a model that other institutions across the FE landscape can learn from.

Challenge

Like many academic institutions, Waltham Forest College had relied on the same backup platform for more than a decade. While it fulfilled core data-protection functions, it was increasingly stretched by today’s hybrid IT environments, mounting storage needs, and the evolving tactics of cybercriminals. 

Post-pandemic, cyberattacks on educational institutions have surged. Ransomware groups now routinely target schools and colleges, knowing that disruption to learning can pressure administrators into paying ransoms. At the same time, cyber insurance policies have become stricter, with underwriters demanding evidence of immutable storage, regular DR testing, and proven recovery capabilities.

Waltham Forest College’s legacy setup backed up data to both on-premises hardware and cloud storage but lacked immutability – the ability to prevent data from being altered or deleted. Backups were performed manually, often over weekends, consuming valuable staff time. DR relied on a complex VMware-based system that required specialist support, high overhead costs, and offered limited scope for real-world testing.

The result was a classic FE dilemma: essential IT services running on ageing systems, managed by small teams with limited capacity to modernise.

Solution

Waltham Forest College undertook a strategic review of its backup and DR approach to address these challenges. The goals were clear: automate repetitive tasks, enhance protection against ransomware, and align with compliance and insurance requirements, all without increasing costs.

After evaluating several options, the college partnered with Assured Data Protection, whose managed backup and DR service provided the combination of automation, immutability, and resilience testing the college required. The solution was designed to deliver three core outcomes: immutability to safeguard data from tampering or encryption in the event of a cyberattack; automation to eliminate manual intervention and free up IT staff for strategic work; and resilience testing to simulate real-world recovery scenarios quickly and reliably.

The new model provided both on-premises performance for rapid recovery and secure offsite protection to guard against large-scale incidents. By moving to an operating-expense-based service rather than a capital-intensive hardware model, the college gained predictable costs and avoided future refresh cycles.

Equally important was visibility. The college retained full administrative access and oversight, even as the day-to-day management and maintenance were handled externally, resulting in a crucial balance between control and simplicity. 

Results

Eighteen months on, the benefits have been substantial. The move away from manual backups has saved the IT team countless hours, eliminating the need for weekend monitoring, and significantly reducing administrative overhead. From a financial perspective, the college has achieved an estimated 30–40 percent reduction in total cost of ownership over three to five years compared to maintaining and refreshing its previous hardware. DR testing, which once consumed an entire week and required extensive preparation, can now be completed in less than a day, with simulations that closely replicate real-world cyber incidents. The introduction of immutable backups and structured DR testing has also improved compliance with Cyber Essentials and insurance requirements, strengthening the college’s overall resilience posture.

As Waltham Forest College’s assistant director of IT explained, the change has been transformative – “We’ve saved significant time and resources. Recovery times are faster and more reliable, and our DR tests now simulate real attacks rather than theoretical exercises.”

Key Takeaways

Waltham College’s experience offers several key insights that are increasingly relevant across the FE sector. Perhaps the most important is that immutability is no longer optional. With ransomware attacks targeting not just live systems but also backup data, ensuring that copies cannot be altered or deleted has become a fundamental requirement for recovery readiness.

Equally, automation is proving central to resilience. By reducing the number of manual processes, colleges can free up scarce IT resources while minimising the risk of human error, which remains one of the most common causes of data loss. This shift also supports better retention and morale among IT teams, who can focus on forward-looking digital initiatives rather than routine maintenance.

Another critical takeaway is the value of realistic testing. Too often, recovery plans are theoretical exercises rather than true simulations of live incidents. Regular, scenario-based testing gives leadership teams confidence that recovery processes will work under pressure, and it provides the documentation and evidence increasingly demanded by insurers and regulators.

Finally, Waltham Forest College’s experience highlights how managed services can help institutions achieve resilience without overextending their internal resources. Outsourcing the operational complexity of backup and DR allows colleges to maintain strategic oversight while benefiting from specialist expertise, predictable costs and the assurance that systems are continuously monitored and optimised.

As Waltham Forest College continues to expand its digital learning ecosystem, the assurance that it can recover swiftly from disruption has become a cornerstone of its operational strategy.