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Denney Electric Supply Fends off Hackers and Malware with UTM Solution from eSoft

InstaGate UTM Gateways Protect Customers’ Identities, Corporate Info, and Network against Hackers and Malware

The Organization:

Denney Electric Supply

The Challenge:

After its service provider stopped providing Frame Relay services, Denney Electric Supply was forced to look for a new way to provide secure connectivity between its stores.

The eSoft Solution:

eSoft provided the wholesale electrical distributor with seven of its award-winning InstaGate Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances.

“eSoft gives us a comfort level of knowing we’re not going to have hackers, spyware or viruses getting in. It improves our business overall. Hackers don’t get the information they’re after, but we still have the functionality of being on the Internet.”
-- Don Griffith, MIS Manager, Denney Electric Supply

The Benefits:

  • The chain’s network and resources, including confidential customer information, are safe from hackers and identity thieves.
  • Malware is caught at the perimeter of the network, before it can cause any problems at all.
  • Intrusion Prevention provides protection against hackers and bot networks.

Integrator:

  • Connectivity Systems, Inc. (www.connectivitysystems.com) is an eSoft partner with well over 100 successful eSoft deployments throughout the United States. Its clients include small/medium size businesses and publicly traded companies which chose to work with Connectivity Systems, Inc. because of its depth of product knowledge and commitment to client satisfaction.

    • eSoft Components Protecting Denney Electric Supply

  • eSoft’s Web ThreatPak filters spyware, phishing sites, browser exploits, viruses, and other malicious Internet content while allowing Denney Electric Supply to set and enforce its own Internet usage policies. The large database of spyware, phishing and other URLs is updated automatically with newly categorized websites through eSoft’s patented SoftPak Director™ threat response architecture, and the organization can add its own custom URLs to the database.
  • eSoft’s Intrusion Prevention System, included with all ThreatPaks, keeps hackers off the network.
  • eSoft’s VPN Manager makes it simple for Denney Electric Supply to centrally manage its distributed network of InstaGate security appliances. With a few mouse clicks, Denney Electric Supply created its VPNs and securely connected its headquarters store to the rest of the stores. VPN Manager reduces the organization’s IT resource requirements and ultimately lowers the overall cost of network ownership.

 

Provider Decision Leads to Customer Need

Denney Electric Supply is one of Pennsylvania’s largest wholesale electrical distributors. With more than 20,000 items in stock, the company provides quality brand names at affordable prices to contractors, businesses and homeowners. Its eight stores and 150 employees provide fast, friendly service.

In 2007, Denney Electric Supply’s service provider, Verizon, stopped serving Frame Relay to the company’s stores, which meant Denney Electric Supply would lose the inherent security provided by Frame Relay. (Frame Relay, an OSI layer 2 technology, offers virtual private connection between network devices.) The organization decided to implement Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) from location to location to provide security in a spoke-and-wheel design with each location coming into the main headquarters store in Ambler, Pennsylvania.

“Anything computer related goes through the mainframe, including inventory, sales, accounts payable and receivable, and so on,” said Don Griffith, MIS manager for Denney Electric Supply. “We needed to provide Internet access to every store but we needed security at every location to protect customer identities and credit card information as well as employee and corporate information. We also needed to protect the network against viruses and spyware in order to keep it up and running.”

Bright Idea: Stick with What Works

Griffith had been using a security solution from eSoft as a firewall for six years before the need for VPN capabilities arose. Having had great success with the eSoft solution, he called his integrator, Connectivity Systems, based in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, to ask about other eSoft products that might fit Denney Electric Supply’s new VPN requirements. “eSoft’s solutions had always been so easy to use and we’d never had any problems in the six years we’d been using them, so we never had a desire to look anywhere else,” said Griffith. Ben Minardi of Connectivity Systems told him about eSoft’s InstaGate Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances and Denney Electric Supply procured seven of the gateways for its stores.

Active Protection against Hackers and Malware

The InstaGate’s Intrusion Prevention System keeps hackers outside the network. This protects the confidential financial, personal, and corporate information present on the electrical distributor’s servers and in customer databases from potential identity thieves. The InstaGate automatically logs attacks for reporting analysis and optionally alerts an administrator when there’s an attack of interest or evidence of an infected laptop. The InstaGate’s self-updating features mean that it’s always updated with the latest signatures for blocking new and emerging attacks.

“eSoft gives us a comfort level of knowing we’re not going to have hackers, spyware or viruses getting in,”said Griffith. “It improves our business overall. Hackers don’t get the information they’re after, but we still have the functionality of being on the Internet.”

In addition, eSoft’s gateway anti-virus features one of the largest databases of known virus signatures, providing protection for Denney Electric Supply from viruses, worms and Trojans in virtually any traffic type. Both outbound and inbound traffic is scanned to stop infected content from entering or leaving the network.

Powerful Management, Ease of Use

eSoft offers a thorough set of administrative and maintenance features that allow MIS managers like Griffith to implement a sophisticated security solution without extensive training or time investments. eSoft’s security applications are designed to be enabled with a simple click of the mouse and configured in a matter of minutes, and they provide immediate protection with continuous, automatic updates – without administration.

“I’m the only one supporting the eSoft solution, and that says a lot about the ease of management,” said Griffith. “The menus and web-based management make it so easy. Connectivity Systems has also been so responsive to our needs. All I can say is we haven’t had any viruses or other problems since deploying eSoft’s solutions.”
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