Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert) — GovCMS

The players

The national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Australia) is the main government point of contact for Australian businesses when it comes to cyber security incidents and threats, and guarding against cyber attacks. The agency has a broad audience — from highly specialised small businesses to large multinational companies. These groups visit the site to get more information on CERT Australia, and to view industry risk profiles, research findings, resources, etc.

The problem

CERT Australia’s website was in need of a major update. CERT needed a new website and a brand refresh to deliver a contemporary digital presence.

As a first step, CERT Australia contracted Acquia to complete a discovery report. Key findings included the need to:

• Migrate to a modern content management system
• Implement an improved information architecture (IA)
• Introduce a modern design that was engaging and responsive
• Improve the publishing workflow

In mid 2017, CERT Australia issued a Request for Quote for a brand refresh and website redevelopment.

The solution

Salsa Digital won the tender and followed our mature delivery system, kicking off the project with our discovery phase, which included requirements gathering and prioritisation. From there, we focused on the brand refresh and how it might look in the GovCMS templates.

Brand refresh

The high level brief called for a more modern brand that was connected to the existing brand but also reflected CERT Australia as a trusted voice in cyber security and complemented the Joint Cyber Security Centres and the Australian Cyber Security Centre brands.

We started with a workshop looking at brand and user experience (UX). The brand workshop looked deeply at CERT Australia and the non-visual elements of its brand, as well as focusing on the audience and what the brand should communicate.

Then our design team presented several different branding options. In the end these pushed the brand a little too far, and so we came back with a more toned down brand that delivered a fresh look and feel without a drastic departure from the old brand.

As part of the branding process we also delivered brand guidelines for ongoing use of the brand.

The new brand

Website build

Following the discovery phase and brand redesign, we moved onto planning and implementation of the website build. Some of the key areas of work included:

• Working with CERT Australia to simplify their IA, focusing on a maximum of three levels of navigation to improve usability.

• Adapting the GovCMS template with the new logo and brand.

• Identifying and creating the different GovCMS content types the site needed, including standard, news, alerts and partner content types; plus homepage promotions and a quick links area.

• News and alerts landing pages

• Integrating the site with iframes for charts.

• Bringing an affiliate site (Joint Cyber Security Centres) into the main CERT Australia site (this involved integrating the site into the new IA and physically bringing the site into the main GovCMS site).

Eight weeks later the site was built and we handed it back to CERT Australia ready for content population. CERT Australia then spent a couple of months perfecting the content, and we provided support and answered questions as they arose. The site launched in December 2017.

Desktop

The benefits

CERT Australia has gained many benefits from the brand refresh and new site. The new look and feel delivers a contemporary digital presence for CERT Australia that better reflects the agency.

Some of the other benefits delivered from the project include:

• The standard GovCMS advantages:
  • a stable and reliable CMS
  • 24x7 enterprise support and proactive monitoring
  • security compliance at the highest level
  • an easy-to-use CMS
• Cost advantages from using GovCMS and an adapted theme
• New and improved IA so users can find information quickly and easily
• Threats listed and easily accessible