Onward Turns to iboss for Advanced Secure Web Gateway
See how Onward, one of the North West of England's largest not-for-profit social housing providers, replaced its legacy web filtering solution with iboss Zero Trust SASE to boost performance, productivity, and cost efficiency for its hybrid workforce.
Onward Case Study
Download the complete case study to see how Onward replaced its legacy web filtering solution with iboss Zero Trust SASE, halving help desk tickets and delivering real-time policy updates for its hybrid workforce.
Key Statistics
Overview
Onward Homes is one of the North West of England's largest not‑for‑profit social housing providers, managing more than 35,000 homes across Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Merseyside and Lancashire.
As the organisation expanded its hybrid working model and brought more services in‑house, the workforce has grown to over 1,000 employees meaning its legacy web security infrastructure became increasingly unfit for purpose. Onward needed a modern, cloud‑first, Zero Trust‑ready platform that could secure staff working anywhere, without slowing them down.
After evaluating the market, Onward selected iboss' Zero Trust SASE platform to replace its legacy on-premise solution. The result has been a step‑change in security, performance, manageability, and user experience.
About Onward
As an organisation, Onward is relatively new, but its legacy stretches back over 50 years. Established in 2018, Onward (formerly known as Symphony Housing Group) brought together several housing associations: Liverpool Housing Trust; Hyndburn Homes; Peak Valley Housing Association; and Ribble Valley Homes. In 2021, Contour Homes was amalgamated into Onward Homes which finalised the transition to become one group.
Onward provides homes and services that make a real difference across its neighbourhoods, builds and manages affordable housing, and works with local partners to support customers across the region. The social landlord provides a range of affordable housing types including general needs, homes for over 55s and supported housing.
Onward's Challenge
Onward shifted the organisation to a predominantly remote work model post Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the workforce has expanded as Onward has transitioned more of its services to its Onward Repairs and Onward Environmental teams.
Desk-based staff now largely work from home, while neighbourhood specialists, scheme managers, repair teams and environmental staff are constantly on the move across the region – meaning a growing mix of laptops and devices. Only the contact centre and facilities management teams are fully office-based. This shift exposed limitations in the organisation's legacy on-premise web filtering solution – a system critical for controlling, monitoring and protecting how users access the internet.
While this worked reliably when everyone was office‑based, the shift to permanent hybrid working prompted the search for a more suitable, cloud-based alternative. Relying on ageing, end-of-life hardware, the legacy web filtering system delivered a different experience depending on whether staff were in the office or at home.
Unlike for office-based staff, cloud syncs on policy changes such as allowing a certain pool of employees to access AI services or blocking a specific website were slow and unpredictable for remote employees often having to wait 24 hours for changes and updates to take effect. This created frustration, slowed productivity, and generated frequent IT helpdesk tickets.
Onward attempted several times to migrate to the vendor's cloud offering, but these efforts proved unsuccessful. In one instance, the organisation was onboarded to the wrong platform entirely, leading to further technical issues. Combined with limited vendor support and growing technical difficulties, confidence in the solution declined and the organisation began exploring alternative solutions. Onward's IT team assessed the market to identify the best cloud based web filtering solutions available.
Onward's iboss Solution
Onward identified iboss' Zero Trust SASE platform, deploying iboss' Advanced Secure Web Gateway capability to replace the legacy web filtering solution. A two layered security system sitting between the employees and the internet, iboss checks every website and filters links to block any unsafe, inappropriate or unknown downloads that are against Onward's organisational policies. The implementation provides Onward with a modern, scalable, cost-effective and easy to use cloud-based solution designed specifically to support hybrid workforces without compromising security or user experience.
Solution highlights include: • Cloud-native Secure Web Gateway: Replaced legacy, hardware-dependent systems with a cloud solution designed for hybrid working environments • Consistent user experience: Delivered the same web filtering experience for users whether working from the office or remotely, eliminating previous inconsistencies • Rapid policy updates: Policy changes now propagate across the organisation within minutes, rather than overnight, improving responsiveness and productivity • Simple and straightforward policy management: Intuitive interface allows Onward's IT team to create simple or highly granular policies by user group, category, and risk level • Robust security controls: Automatic website categorisation updates, blocking of malicious and inappropriate content, download restrictions, and layered security enforcement
When we were exploring alternative solutions to our legacy solution, iboss provided us with an extensive demo of the Zero Trust SASE platform. During this, the team were engaging and passionate about the platform. They really know their solution and their customer support is spot on. The entire team is extremely knowledgeable, helpful and quick to respond. iboss is consistently updating the categories that fall under the Advanced Secure Web Gateway capability, these categories are very distinct, clear and stark. As an end user, this is really key as new websites with harmful content are blocked instantly and creating new policies under each category is much more efficient.
Key Results for Onward
- Improved user experience: Staff now receive a consistent and reliable web access experience regardless of location
- Greater security: Comprehensive malware defence with sandboxing, behavioral analysis, and real-time protection against ransomware and zero-day attacks
- Reduced IT workload: Help desk tickets relating to web access issues have halved
- Increased productivity: Faster policy changes and streamlined processes to create a policy have removed friction for employees
- Cost efficiency: iboss' Zero Trust SASE platform provided a more cost-effective solution that was fit for purpose
Highlights
- Replaced ageing end-of-life on-premise web filtering hardware with a cloud-native Advanced Secure Web Gateway
- Eliminated 24-hour policy propagation delays — changes now take effect within minutes for all users regardless of location
- IT helpdesk tickets related to web access issues halved since deployment
- Consistent, reliable web filtering experience delivered equally to office-based and remote staff
- Simple and highly granular policy management by user group, category, and risk level
- Planned mobile filtering rollout for iPhones and iPads to extend Zero Trust protection to all devices
iboss just fits better. It's as detailed or as simple as you want to make it. What's more, it's one vendor and one solution with room to flexibly incorporate more users and a wider range of devices as we grow our team. With iboss we can futureproof the security of our business, reducing the need for multiple suppliers.
The Future
Unlike other providers, iboss offers the opportunity for confident, ready‑to‑deploy mobile filtering, allowing Onward to extend consistent web protection to mobile iPhones and iPads. A rollout is planned over the coming months.
Ultimately, iboss has enabled Onward to focus less on managing technology challenges and more on delivering high-quality housing and community services while keeping its hybrid workforce secure online.