United Arab Emirates, 4 February 2010: The Electronic Documents Centre LLC (EDC), established by Emirates Post Group Holding, has implemented TippingPoint’s Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and Digital Vaccine service to secure its growing demands for financial printing services, data and monitor its network traffic in real time.
EDC was originally established as a one-stop-shop for printing, mostly catering to financial institutions. The company now prints financial and nonfinancial cards, catering to the needs of around 85 percent of all banks in UAE.
According to Shereef Abbas, Information Security Officer at EDC, to comply with ISO27001, VISA and MasterCard International requirements for a Card Personalization bureau, EDC needed a solution to monitor the network traffic in real-time and get notifications when exceptions occur. The company was also looking at solutions that would further enhance the security of its existing IT infrastructure and allows improving work efficiency through more manageable traffic monitoring.
“Monitoring different networks and analyzing the traffic manually was a daunting task and required time and dedicated personnel,” said Shereef. “During discussions with our local network of vendors and system administrators, everybody had a complaint with other IPS devices, mostly about false alarms. With TippingPoint, however, reports are sent only when necessary, especially after it gets fine-tuned and configured to threat possibilities.”
For a team of only five people responsible of EDC’s entire IT infrastructure, accuracy and reliability is very important to not only improve workflow efficiency but maintain security as well. After an extensive evaluation of available solutions in the market, the decision to choose TippingPoint’s Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and Digital Vaccine service was influenced by three primary reasons:
• Existing Customers reference
• Evaluation reports and performance of TippingPoint’s Digital Vaccine sessions
• TippingPoint’s support and local partner presence
Following deployment of TippingPoint IPS and Digital Vaccine, EDC was able to move toward compliance with international regulations and protect its infrastructure from security threats that stem from vulnerabilities. The integration gave a third layer of security to the company’s complex IT environment and additional protection as well for their client’s sensitive data. TippingPoint’s Digital Vaccine also kept its protection current with the latest threats.
One of the benefits of Digital Vaccine, according to Shereef, was the option “not to immediately install the patches in our servers”, giving the team ample time to follow internal administrative procedures before updating the software.
The implementation and training process was conducted through FVC, TippingPoint’s authorised distributor, and their authorised resellers.
“FVC’s expertise in the security domain gave us the confidence while choosing the right solution, in addition to TippingPoint’s leadership in the IPS market,” added Shereef. “At the end of the day, it’s not the cost that matters but the performance of the device as well the after sales service and support.”
