calfordseaden cuts security administration time by 99 percent with Sophos email appliance

(29/08/2008)

Sophos has 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."

Related topics:  Computer and PC Security   Network Security   Virus, Worm, Email security, spyware and malware 

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