akt

Strengthening cybersecurity, simplifying collaboration and building a trusted IT partnership

akt is a UK charity working to support LGBTQ+ young people aged 16–25 who are at risk of homelessness or living in hostile environments. With teams working across services, partnerships and frontline support, having reliable, secure and well-structured IT systems is essential to enable staff to collaborate effectively and focus on delivering vital support.

The challenge

Like many growing charities, akt faced the challenge of managing IT alongside a wide range of operational responsibilities.

Given the size of the charity, a dedicated IT team was not a sensible option. They needed an IT partner that they could trust to meet the complex range of IT and cyber challenges, including cybersecurity, device management and day-to-day IT support,

As Alex Webb, Operations Manager at akt, explains:

“Our main challenges were having the capacity to manage IT support alongside the other tasks and services my team had to support staff with. Due to our size, having a dedicated IT team wasn’t a proportionate solution so Cyber Security, Data Protection, IT support and device management was part of a few roles to spread it out which made delivering an effective service a challenge.”

Alongside this, achieving Cyber Essentials was a key organisational goal, not just as a compliance exercise but as part of a wider ambition to strengthen cybersecurity and data protection practices.

The solution

akt partnered with ramsac to deliver totalIT, providing fully managed IT support alongside strategic guidance and proactive security improvements.

A major focus was supporting akt on their journey towards Cyber Essentials accreditation. ramsac worked closely with the team to clearly map out the requirements, guide them through the application process and implement the necessary technical controls.

To support this, ramsac introduced VMaaS (Vulnerability Management as a Service), giving akt ongoing visibility of risks and clear priorities for improvement, both to support Cyber Essentials and to strengthen security more broadly. Alongside this, KnowBe4 security awareness training was implemented to embed good cyber practices across the organisation.

As Alex says:

“ramsac has been incredible in helping us progress towards Cyber Essentials. For us, ensuring we go beyond compliance with our Cyber Security and Data Protection practice is really important.

ramsac made the Cyber Essentials application very clear to follow and the support of our Relationship Manager, Solutions Architect and Technical Consultant has meant the road to submitting our application has felt very well supported.”

On the collaboration side, ramsac also delivered a full SharePoint revamp, replacing a fragmented file setup with a clear, well-structured system that worked across the whole organisation.

“Moving to SharePoint has really helped our file sharing and management. Previously we were using different sites for different teams.

The advice and guidance ramsac gave us with how to approach permission groups has also meant that creating one system for the entire organisation has been relatively simple.”

The results

With ramsac’s support, akt is now close to achieving Cyber Essentials accreditation and has a far more proactive, structured approach to cyber security.

VMaaS has given Alex and the team clarity and confidence in where to focus their efforts:

“VMaaS has made my job supporting cyber security much easier and understanding how I can best support the team with managing risks.

Security awareness has also improved across the organisation, supported by regular, digestible KnowBe4 training:

“The KnowBe4 training is great for introducing different types of cyber security best practice in an easy to digest way.”

Crucially, outsourcing IT to ramsac has freed akt’s internal teams to focus on their core responsibilities, knowing their IT and cyber security are in safe hands.

“akt is very proactive with refining our IT systems and cyber security which I think is in a large part due to the support we’ve had from ramsac.”

A trusted partnership

For akt, the relationship with ramsac has been just as important as the technology itself. With a dedicated Relationship Manager, Solutions Architect and Technical Consultant, akt benefits from both responsive day-to-day support and longer-term strategic guidance.

“This creates a really thorough network of support for akt both for me as the partnership lead and for the charity for the IT issues that can arise throughout the year.”

Alex would not hesitate to recommend ramsac:

“Every ramsac team member I have spoken to have been so warm, personable and solutions-focused which is exactly what we want from our IT partner.”