Endpoint Insight
Global IT support services firm streamlines endpoint security management with centralized system.

TechTeam Global delivers global, multilingual help desk services and other specialized IT solutions to multinational firms and is headquartered in Southfield, Mich. The company has used Sophos' antivirus software for several years and last year upgraded to Sophos Endpoint Security and Control 8.0, which combines antivirus and firewall protection with endpoint assessment. It now has 60 clients covered from a single server and plans to extend it to 1,400 within 18 months. TechTeam wanted to centralize its security reporting and management tasks and ensure that managed PCs would stay protected.

"Before we deployed the Sophos NAC client that comes with version 8, we had a variety of update sources and consoles that we had to check, some that were automated and some manual methods that involved visiting the physical PC in someone's office," says John Endahl, senior information security administrator at TechTeam.

"Now we can go to a single console and see if all of our PCs are compliant, if they have their firewalls turned on and operational," he adds. "This gives us the confidence that all of our managed endpoints stay managed and protected as best we can. We can extend our field of vision to know if we have an endpoint that is at risk of being compromised before they actually touch our network."

TechTeam initially rolled out the software just to the IT department, and now is expanding it company wide as part of a desktop hardware refresh cycle. But this is a bit of an issue, because "one of the problems we have now is that we are buying new hardware and it is running 64-bit Vista OS, which isn't yet supported by Sophos' NAC client," says Endahl. The company is postponing its Vista purchase for a few months to try to time it with the release of Sophos' support. Sophos' NAC client doe...

TechTeam was excited about adding the endpoint control features to its Sophos antivirus software. "It really enhances the entire package," says Endahl. "It gives us tremendous insight about the state of the security policy of each individual PC." Before deploying the NAC module, he says, "we couldn't validate the current firewall status of a PC using just the Windows Group Policies."

The company currently has a single NAC server. "Based on the performance of the server and our network we may or may not add more," Endahl says. "With locations around the world it's always good to keep policy servers as close to the systems they manage to keep latency down."

One of the sticking points with deploying NAC is the increase in login times and user perception that the PC takes longer to connect to the network. Given that many of the users at TechTeam are call center agents, they are very sensitive to any delays.

"We try to make sure that every employee can come in and get logged in to their PC as quickly as possible, because we are a service organization and very sensitive to anything which keeps us from providing that service in a timely fashion to our customers," says Endahl.

"We have timed this with stopwatches and found that the Sophos NAC client has already checked in with their policy servers before the PC has finished loading its applications, so the impact and delays have been almost nonexistent."

The Sophos product "just continues to get better by adding new functionality without over-complicating things," he says.

[IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE]
[IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE]
[IMAGE]
[IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE]

Implementor John Endahl, senior information security administrator
Company TechTeam Global
Size of deployment 60 clients now, eventually 1,400
Problem/solution Cumbersome antivirus software replaced by centralized system for keeping client PCs updated
[IMAGE]
[IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE] [IMAGE]
[IMAGE]
[IMAGE]

< PREV PAGE   |   1  |   2  |   3  |   4  |   5  |   NEXT PAGE  >