Microsoft Forefront Antivirus Security Bolsters Bolton Council Security

(20/04/2007)

Bolton Council is one of the best performing local authorities in the UK. In 2006, officers decided the council needed a better anti-malware solution. Bolton Council wanted to make much greater use of online services, including automatically transmitted e-mail. It also wanted a more secure environment to support mobile and remote working for its employees. Its existing solution relied on a single antivirus technology that was becoming increasingly risky. With 12,000 employees, Bolton Council also wanted to manage its growing estate of 5,500 mailboxes more efficiently.

Bolton council has deployed Microsoft® Forefront™ Security for Exchange Server to provide a more secure environment for its upgrade to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 communications and collaboration server. The solution has cut two person-days a week in operating costs and prevented spam e-mails from threatening the network’s stability.

Ray Crompton, Corporate ICT Account Manager, said: “We were blocking 2,000 to 3,000 spam e-mails a day and quarantining 1,000, but quarantine management alone was taking up two full person-days a week. It was also difficult to filter lists and check up on and identify people who were abusing the e-mail messaging system, using profanities in communications, for example.”

The existing e-mail servers did not run any protection against viruses, so if an e-mail-borne virus breached the gateway defence and “hit” the servers, it would often lead to e-mail downtime. Crompton says: “E-mail is critical to our authority’s working arrangements, and any downtime causes huge disruption to critical services. Our defences were only at the front end, and there was nothing to protect the back-end servers.”

In its search for a better anti-malware solution, Bolton Council first looked at upgrading its existing solution. It then considered deploying Sophos Anti-Virus. Neither proved satisfactory. Crompton says: “We struggled to find a single vendor with a complete solution that could secure us from many different attackers: virus writers, spammers, and hackers. Filtering out spam could take up to five days, and while we considered some aspects of these products good on spam, there was no filtering of key words or reporting functionality.”

On taking out a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) for low-cost volume licences, the council upgraded several of its critical systems and migrated to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 communications and collaboration server.

The EA provided an opportunity to learn more about Microsoft antivirus solutions. After attending a briefing at Microsoft Services, the council’s ICT department became aware of two products: Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server antivirus software and Forefront Spam Manager.

By this time, Bolton council was already using Microsoft Internet and Acceleration Server 2004 as a firewall, and this was then extended to pre-authenticate users and stop attacks against the new Exchange servers.

Having decided to implement Forefront Security for Exchange Server, Bolton council was delighted with the fast time to market. Crompton says: “Microsoft Services came in and installed Forefront Security on five Exchange servers, including the clustered back end. The product was up and running in less than half a day.”

Bolton Council was able to move ahead quickly and securely with new ways of working, such as remote access and mobility solutions, because of the added security of Microsoft Forefront solutions. Due to the EA, the council achieved a much lower total cost of ownership and cut two person-days a week in operating costs.

With the automated ability to block spam and detect malware, Bolton Council’s IT team can concentrate on higher-value tasks, rather than firefighting. In addition, Bolton Council is making significant cost savings in terms of storage and has reduced the risk of downtime to its critical systems.

Microsoft is exhibiting at Infosecurity Europe 2007, Europe’s number one dedicated Information security event.

Related topics:  IT Network and Computer Security   Security market sectors 

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