Stonesoft Eradicates Network Management Headaches for Large U.S. Energy Utility

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SOURCE: Bower Communications

Always-on network demands met with Stonesoft’s high availability, network visibility

Atlanta, Georgia (PRWEB) June 20, 2012

One of the largest natural gas distribution utilities in the U.S. has partnered with Stonesoft to simplify network management and keep business operations running smoothly. With targeted industrial and infrastructure attacks like Stuxnet on the rise, utility companies are under increased pressure to improve network security management and effectiveness. Today, Stonesoft works with several large utility organizations across the globe to meet these demands, including providing its innovative firewalls and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) to one of the 10 largest utilities in the U.S.

The utility, which provides natural gas services to more than 235 communities in the Southeast, recently deployed the Stonesoft Firewall and IPS to secure its network against sophisticated attacks as well as improve network management. Stonesoft’s inspection and detection capabilities have protected the network since day one. However, the Stonesoft management console has provided one of the greatest benefits to date by allowing network managers to focus less on manual tasks and more on strategic security.

In a recent interview, the manager of network security at this utility revealed the importance of the Stonesoft Management Center in securing the network: “If I want to create a rule on my firewall or the IPS because there’s malicious traffic coming through, I can easily write rules that say ‘blacklist this on my firewall.’ For instance, I had an FTP brute force attack a couple of months ago. I wrote a rule that said if you see 10 failed attempts in a row, just go ahead and blacklist that IP for a day.”

In addition to making it easy to manage dozens of network devices, the Stonesoft Management Center has also made it easy for the utility to resolve end-user support issues. From the utility’s network manager: “You can quickly find issues in minutes where with other products it can be very difficult. If I need to troubleshoot a problem with Stonesoft, I can ask the end-user when they were having the problem and, in minutes, I can pull the logs and see exactly what was going on.”

The utility’s network management concerns echoes those of most enterprises that are struggling to secure their networks with limited human and financial resources. The Stonesoft Management Center, used by more than 3,500 organizations worldwide, has received widespread praise for providing enterprise-class management capabilities:

The utility’s network manager comments: “I don’t want to have to open 10 applications to do the things I need to do. With Stonesoft, I open the one Management Center platform and everything is right there. I can do everything I need. There’s no comparison to anything else that’s out there today.”

Built-in High Availability Wards Off Unanticipated Costs

After suffering a network outage that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, the utility was looking for high availability (HA) when evaluating firewalls. Stonesoft’s proprietary HA technology, Multi-Link™, ensures that network traffic can be seamlessly and securely routed to another ISP or other type of connection in the event one connection point goes down. It also makes network upgrades and maintenance easier. If the utility needs to do a failover in the middle of the day or a product upgrade without causing any impact, Stonesoft can accommodate.

“The high availability that Stonesoft offers has been a huge benefit for us especially in our critical environments where we can’t afford a hardware failure to bring our whole company down,” said the utility’s network manager.

For more information on Stonesoft’s network security solutions, please visit http://www.stonesoft.com.

About Stonesoft
Stonesoft Corporation (NASDAQ OMX: SFT1V) delivers dynamic, software-based network security solutions that secure information flow for more than 4,000 mid- and large-sized organizations across the globe. These include the industry’s first transformable Security Engine as well as standalone next generation firewalls, intrusion prevention systems and SSL VPN solutions. At the core of these solutions is the Stonesoft Management Center, which unifies and simplifies the management of entire networks while reducing TCO. Stonesoft is a recognized researcher of advanced evasion techniques and has the highest customer retention rate in the industry. Founded in 1990, the company’s corporate headquarters are based in Helsinki, Finland with North American headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, visit http://www.stonesoft.com or stoneblog.stonesoft.com.

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