Delivering consistent, secure web performance for public sector organizations

Public sector websites and apps may not get a lot of love because, for the most part, they are taken for granted by those who use and need them the most. These sites deliver the foundations of what societies and their populations need. Whether it’s garbage collection information, applying for unemployment payment benefits, or getting real-time information on a health crisis or natural disaster, governmental organizations bear numerous responsibilities and the public’s trust. 

Making all of this happen is complex, and at the most basic, technical level, it requires IT planning to offer uptime and responsiveness no matter the scale of demand. Even in situations where a sudden influx of thousands of requests come in per second, the public user expects instant and up-to-date services and information. It may be a thankless job to ensure the availability, scalability, reliability and performance of this access, but it’s one that solution architects and devops engineers do to secure consistent content and service delivery.  

Responsive and ready for anything

While the task of managing a complete IT solution for a public sector agency is about much more than just content delivery, the need to be ready for anything does keep tech resources up at night. Worrying about web portals and online citizen services being unable to cope with high demand and unpredictable floods of traffic, public sector IT and media departments globally have sought ways to safeguard infrastructure to protect critical public sector services from being overwhelmed or completely taken down by unforeseen demand or lack of redundancy. 

Varnish Software has helped public sector organizations in many important ways, including, but not limited to: 

• Availability: Crisis situations in particular show how essential providing reliable information for citizens is. Safeguarding the availability of information 24/7 means making sure that a website/app is not overrun by demand, protecting backend(s), and putting redundancy measures in place. 
• Security: Public sector websites are big security targets, given how essential public services are to the smooth functioning of society. Whether it’s hackers trying to ransom an organization, a data breach or leak that exposes the personal data of tens of thousands (or more) individuals, or a crippling DDoS attack that knocks a site and access to services out for any length of time, public sector organizations need effective protection strategies to guard against their security vulnerabilities.
• Performance: Performance can mean many things, including delivering real-time information as soon as it’s requested, meaning that speed is of the essence. Performance can also come down to being able to scale up for demand, making availability and redundancy a part of the performance equation as well.
   
  

Varnish offers preventive solutions that sit in front of your infrastructure and help power secure, consistent public sector web performance. If you’re ready to learn more, take a look at our new e-book, Delivering consistent, secure web performance for public sector organizations.