Business Objective and Benefits: To improvement the performance and security of remote connections to a centralised IT system whilst minimising increases in costly connectivity.

Products and Services used: Check Point VPN-1 Pro, Check Point Safe@office, Check Point SecureClient, Nokia IP security appliances, Surfcontrol web content filter, Packetshaper, RSA SecureID and Presence professional services.

This company had been using a Nokia firewall appliance with Check Point software and wanted to increase the capacity and manageability of their wide area network (WAN). The WAN consisted of many small management offices on the various sites connecting in to the company’s centralised IT systems.

In addition the company wanted to provide connectivity for a number of mobile and remote users. The increasing use of the network also meant that content security and anti-virus services needed to be more easily manageable.

The solution extends the protection offered by the firewall by adding MAILsweeper email content security software, Surfcontrol web content filter and Sophos anti-virus together with small office versions of the Check Point system for the remote offices and the Check Point Secure Client for remote workers. To optimise performance on the main connection to the Internet at the head office a Packetshaper bandwidth management appliance was installed.

This sophisticated solution provides a comprehensive set of services to protect each element of the wide area network and allows these to be managed and controlled centrally. The overall system has excellent throughput that means that, in spite of the increased amount of traffic that is generated by the wide availability of applications, expensive bandwidth upgrades have been minimised.