Proactive security solution helps IT System Integrator optimize services and operations
Industry: IT System Integrator
Location: Asia / Europe / Australia
Company Size: 200 Employees.
Challenge:
Reduce spam levels without delaying legitimate email
Promote safer email behaviour across company
Solution:
Intelligent Pre-getaway filtering solution. based on the Cisco IronPort Email Security Appliances integrated with the Cisco Threat Response Tool.
Results:
Over 2 million threats blocked and 99.3 percent less spam in first six months.
Less risk of delays to legitimate emails
Decline in spam and virus-related IT service Desk calls, releasing IT to focus more on business enablement projects.
Review
We needed an intelligent email-gateway filtering solution that would make it easier to enforce policies and to protect users, without being overzealous and bringing the business to a grinding halt.
Calls to our IT Service Desk have dropped substantially. Overall, we hardly spend anytime fire-fighting security problems, which means we can concentrate on planning and delivering projects that will add increased value to the business.
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Challange
We are the top-notch service provider in fields such as networking, computing, messaging and collaboration platforms. With a strategic vantage point, we can easily deliver turnkey IT solutions from structured cabling to collaborative markets. With us, you can be assured of expansive networking and real-time technological utilities to improve the quality of human services. We recommend out-of-box IT solutions that are very tech savvy and at the same time…very simplistic in nature. This enables us to form leading strategic rapports with our contemporaries and clients alike.
With a wide range of clients, it is very important to note that we are not just all about the ‘talk’. An official accreditation of ISO 9001-2008 reassures our conviction to delivering the very best quality products.
Our aim is to become the undisputed champion in professional services and IT infrastructure solutions. Our founding ethos are: To Know…To Serve…To Trust. We thrive in managing the complete IT assets lifecycle and customizing them through a selective, systematic, and sustained process that leads to a competitive edge.
With malware and spyware attacks on the rise, the company began to experience problems with excessively high levels of bogus emails. “We were receiving upward of unsolicited emails a day, which created a lot of frustration with users, ” says Member of IT. “To make matters worse, people were also losing legitimate emails, because they contained words and images with pornographic connotations and were, therefore, being incorrectly filtered as spam.”
The Solution
The company’s response was to move from a reactive approach that focused solely on containing threats once they had passed through the firewall, to a proactive one that assessed and removed risks, in real-time before they could penetrate the network perimeter.
“We needed an intelligent email-gateway filtering solution that would make it easier to enforce policies and to protect users, without being overzealous and bringing the business to a grinding halt,” says Senior Management.
After extensively researching the market, the customer formed a shortlist headed by Cisco IronPort™ solutions. “IronPort’s reputation, plus the fact that they were now part of Cisco, effectively offered two market leaders for the price of one,” says Senior Management.”
This advanced security solution, comprising Cisco® IronPort Email Security allows the company to benefit from the latest advances in threat detection and prevention. These innovations include:
• Dynamic Vectoring and Streaming engine: a revolutionary scanning tool for signature-based spyware and malware filtering
• Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO): a combination of threat telemetry, a team of global research engineers, and sophisticated security modeling. SIO also includes Sender Base: a threat-tracking database that captures Internet traffic patterns and data from over 100,000 organizations worldwide.
• Pre-execution Environment (PXE) technology: industry-leading email encryption for helping ensure secure messaging compliance and regulatory requirements.
As the project progressed, its focus widened when company’s HR department saw an opportunity to improve monitoring and governance of email usage across the company.
Taking these new requirements, Cisco Security was able to integrate the Cisco Threat Response tool with the new security platform. As well as providing the ability to restrict inappropriate emails, the solution empowers HR to set up their own automated reports, drill down, and take appropriate corrective action.
The migration was remarkably smooth and largely invisible to end users, says Senior Management. “Best of all, because the Cisco Security solutions are simple ‘plug and play,’ they required minimal configuration and maintenance.”
The Result
Implementing the Cisco Security solutions has enabled the customer to strengthen its email defenses in a number of ways.
Suspicious traffic and potential threats are now automatically intercepted in the cloud before they can reach the desktop. This proactive approach is supported by the SIO, which receives over 30 billion queries daily and increases malware catch rates by more than 20 percent over signature-based scanning-only products. In the first six months, the customer isolated over malicious threats and cut spam levels by 99.3 percent.
Employees are more aware of their responsibilities for safe Internet use. IT security policy has been underpinned by the ability to easily and rapidly block websites frequently targeted by malware and spyware producers. “The Cisco IronPort solution gives us much greater control,” says Member of IT. “For example, remote workers at a production site can use PCs located in the Internet cafe during their breaks.”
There is now less risk of legitimate email that could contain customer orders, breeder data, agreements, or documentation ending up in quarantine.
“We’ve seen a 75 percent reduction in false positives, which are instances when the scanner incorrectly thinks it has found a specific vulnerability,” says Member of IT. “In layman’s terms, this means more ‘good’ email is getting through the system, which means our supply chain can function more effectively and efficiently. If there are any problems, our system even flags these to our users who are empowered to release certain types of mail themselves.”
The project has also been good news for Noble’s IT team. “Calls to our IT Service Desk have dropped substantially,” says Senior Management. “Overall, we hardly spend anytime fire-fighting security problems, which means we can concentrate on planning and delivering projects that will add increased value to the business.”
