At-Bristol, at the heart of Bristol's Harborside area, has chosen
to protect itself with Sophos solutions.
Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control, today
announced that cutting edge science center At-Bristol has deployed
the full suite of Sophos solutions to protect visitors and staff
against malware, spam and unauthorized web content.
At-Bristol is the core of a £450 million urban rejuvenation
scheme, covering eleven acres at the heart of Bristol's Harborside
area in the UK. Its educational facilities include classrooms,
school workshops, dedicated areas for science exhibitions and even
a Planetarium. The center has received more than three million
visitors since it opened in 2000.
At-Bristol faced a number of challenges that contributed to its
need for robust IT defenses. Firstly it is required by law to
restrict access to unlawful and inappropriate online material on
public work stations - this is particularly important given the
number of children using the center's interactive facilities.
Furthermore, the majority of visitors do not have in-depth
knowledge of safe computing, greatly increasing the risk of malware
infection at the organization. At-Bristol also received
approximately 16,000 unsolicited emails per week, causing network
performance issues as well as distracting staff from their core
duties. Finally, the center will shortly upgrade its email servers,
so needed a solution able to protect its new systems.
To meet these challenges, At-Bristol has purchased Sophos
Anti-Virus to secure all of its visitor workstations and staff
computers. It has also deployed Sophos's WS1000 Web Security Appliance to
block access to unauthorized websites, while at the gateway,
Sophos's ES4000 Email
Security Appliance which runs the Sophos PureMessage engine
stops spam and malicious emails from even entering its network.
At-Bristol has received more than three million visitors.
"Like many organizations, At-Bristol was affected by the Lovebug
virus several years ago, and since then we've always taken a
proactive approach to IT security, to safeguard against emerging
threats and ensure that visitors can't compromise our defenses,"
said Ed Williams, Senior Technical Engineer of At-Bristol.
"Sophos's combined hardware and software approach has enabled us to
meet our objective to secure all endpoints, eliminate spam from
users' inboxes and block unwanted online content."
At-Bristol independently evaluated a number of IT security
products and recognised that a fully-integrated solution would be
more effective in terms of simplifying management, reducing
security costs, and ensuring that there were no holes in the
overall security strategy.
"The key factor in choosing Sophos was simplicity of management
- its products offer maximum protection with minimal impact on
users," continued Ed Williams. "We were impressed by the low-level
administrative interaction and remote monitoring functionality of
both appliances, as well as the close integration between all
aspects of IT security protection. What's more, with Sophos's web
appliance we can for the first time log user traffic, giving us
better insight into what the public workstations are being used
for, as well as the ability to identify instances of misuse."
At-Bristol also has future plans to make use of Sophos's
application
control functionality within Sophos Anti-Virus, once the server
migration is complete. This technology will allow the center to
restrict the usage of unauthorized or unwanted applications such as
games, instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing or VoIP
programs.
"All public-facing organizations have a responsibility to ensure
their systems remain uncompromised and free from unwanted online or
email-based material," said Annie Gay,
vice president EMEA at Sophos. "For smaller organizations like
At-Bristol, it's vital that these goals can be achieved without
impacting on employee productivity or overwhelming IT
administrators. By opting for an integrated single vendor solution,
At-Bristol has cut out the management headache and can now
concentrate on its remit for local rejuvenation and education."
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.