IT security and control firm Sophos today announced that
construction and property consultancy, calfordseaden, has selected
Sophos Enterprise Security and Control to protect entry points, end
user machines and servers on the organization's network. Sophos's
ES1000
email appliance will protect calfordseaden's gateway from
email-borne threats, spam, phishing and data leakage, while the
WS1000 web appliance will defend the network against web
attacks.
The organization, which provides a range of professional
services to the UK building and construction industry, installed
both appliances at its IT centre in London Docklands. From this
site, Sophos secures and controls the company's entire network
which is used by 240 staff across five sites in the UK.
The consultancy chose the Sophos ES1000 because of its excellent
spam detection rate - blocking or quarantining approximately 99
percent of spam at the email gateway. Handling 20,000 messages an
hour, the ES1000 features automated security updates and on-demand
remote assistance - greatly minimizing administration time.
calfordseaden's IT administrators can now easily set and monitor
user- and group-specific policies regarding the content of both
internal and external emails, preventing sensitive data from
reaching unauthorized recipients.
"Our previous email security solution was proving difficult to
administer and costs were spiralling due to the hours we were
wasting on managing security," said Neil Barnes, network support
officer at calfordseaden. "Since switching to Sophos's appliances
the IT team has cut its security administration time by 99 percent,
leaving more time to deal with other non-security issues. Since our
employees now rarely receive any spam in their inboxes, users are
safe from the dangers of malicious or inappropriate links."
In addition to purchasing the ES1000, the company also
implemented the Sophos WS1000 web
security solution, not only to defend its corporate network against
modern web threats, but also to control employee use of the
web.
The WS1000 delivers trusted content security and URL filtering
in a single appliance, protecting calfordseaden against all forms
of malware and productivity threats. With SophosLabs now
discovering an average of 15,000 newly infected web pages every day
- 79 percent of which are found on legitimate sites - the WS1000's
ability to proactively scan billions of web pages is a fundamental
security feature for all businesses.
With advanced policy control via a simple web-based management
console, it is simple for the IT team at calfordseaden to set
specific group, user, content-type and time-based policies,
protecting against productivity, security, legal and bandwidth
risks. In addition, the Sophos appliance is updated automatically
every few minutes with the latest threat defences from SophosLabs,
including up-to-date proactive technology and malicious URL
filtration.
"Prior to installing the Sophos solution, our employees used to
waste time surfing the web," continued Barnes. "Now we've got much
greater control over the network, enabling us to block or
re-categorise inappropriate sites in a matter of seconds and
eliminate unnecessary time wasting. It's a really accessible and
valuable piece of technology."
Calfordseaden has been a satisfied user of Sophos Anti-Virus at
the endpoint and servers for the last five years. When it came to
review its entire security policy, it invested in a multi-layered,
integrated approach, addressing the administrator and resource
burden of managing several solutions from different vendors.
"It can be a bit scary to put all your security eggs into one
basket, but this one was easy - over the years Sophos has
demonstrated dedication to support and customer service," said
Barnes. "Combined with a suite of products and services which are
easy to use and manage, we felt very comfortable."
"Business continuity is key to all organizations," said Andrew
Bradshaw, vice president at Sophos UK. "Blocking malicious or
unwanted email, and denying access to dangerous or inappropriate
websites, not only helps with productivity but also keeps the
corporate network safe from infections and other cyberattacks. With
many companies today feeling the pinch from the credit crunch,
there is a danger that security will be given a backseat - a bad
idea when you consider the threat landscape today. Instead,
businesses should consider consolidating their security to address
cost and resource issues and look to vendors that offer integrated
solutions."
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.