Irish Prison Service

Multi-petabytes of storage to help ensure the safety and security of inmates and staff

Scality RING provides assurance that the safeguards around how data is stored and secured will work without fail.

The Irish Prison Service’s mission is, first and foremost, to provide safe and secure custody. For upholding the safety and security of prisoners and staff alike, video surveillance is a mission-critical tool.

Across Ireland’s 12 prison facilities, approximately 5,000 cameras operate 24/7/365. Video footage of incidents must be stored for no less than precisely four years and one day — after that time, it may only be deleted if the case has been investigated and resolved.

With lives literally at stake, reliable preservation of the prisons’ surveillance data is vital.

Scality received the SDC Award for Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) Project of the Year 2020 in recognition of the work on this project.

The challenge

For the past decade, incident footage had been stored on a traditional storage array. None of that data had ever been deleted because the service lacked the visibility and a technical process for secure, systematic deletion.

With the storage array running out of capacity and file sizes skyrocketing due to recently installed high-definition cameras, the need for a new storage solution was evident.

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“Video data has a huge impact on the safety and security of our staff and prisoners. People’s lives are at stake in extreme cases. Therefore, it’s hugely important that there are safeguards around how the data is stored and secured. HPE and Scality provide us with assurance that those safeguards are in place and that they will work.”

George Jackson

Head of ICT, Irish Prison Service

The outcome

Non-negotiables for the long-term storage of this sensitive video data included scalability, security, reliability and durability. But easy, efficient and transparent administration of that data in accordance with law and policy was also crucial.

Irish Prison Service reports that administration is much easier now than with their previous solution, offering peace of mind and freeing up staff to focus on other projects. Scality software provides intelligent data management throughout the lifecycle of the stored video, including secure and automated deletion. The solution includes a series of email alerts to advise relevant parties in advance of deletion, ensuring the process is carried out with full transparency and compliance.

The intelligent end-to-end solution from HPE Apollo 4000 systems, CTERA Portal and Scality RING provides Irish Prison System with the assurance that the safeguards around how data is stored and secured are in place and will work without fail — and that’s essential when lives are on the line.

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“We have confidence in the solution HPE and Scality have brought. It does what it says on the tin. That’s a huge thing for us. If there is an incident, it’s highly important that the solution works and is reliable.”

George Jackson

Head of ICT, Irish Prison Service

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“We clearly needed to upgrade our storage infrastructure with a solution that was more scalable, but also provide a method of deleting video to keep our storage levels more manageable from both a capacity and cost perspective.”

George Jackson

Head of ICT, Irish Prison Service