Clearly defined needs

Florian Stillitano, Network and Security Administrator at Rector considered replacing their antivirus products after using the same inefficient solution for many years. The trigger was due to the ever-larger installation packages, sometimes close to 400MB, and the difficulty to standardize endpoints given the large install base.

“During these four years, our teams have faced various bugs and even translation errors within the software... these plagues really prevented our users from working. Delays and crashes were the daily routine... After careful consideration, we decided to switch to a new vendor, able to accompany us throughout the change.”

Florian Stillitano, Network and Security Administrator

Four major players in the professional antivirus market were retained in the tender, including WithSecure™. To identify and select these four vendors, the following analysts and independent benchmarks were used: AVTest, AV-Comparatives, VirusBTN and Forrester.

Requirements:

• Performance of the solution (tests performed by the technical team)
• Vendor scope (ability to handle other areas such as spam protection, etc.)
• Flexibility, accessibility and quality of the responses provided by technical and sales support

“Our greatest desire with this project was to find an effective solution against viruses and other malware, while consuming very little resources on user computers,” adds Florian Stillitano. “Another decisive criteria was to find a solution for our VMwarebased virtual infrastructure, bypassing vShield which offers limited features.”

Regarding the first criteria, one of the vendors was quickly out of the competition: their proposed solution could only quarantine viruses, not remove them.

WithSecure™ was quickly identified as a more functional and advanced player in this area. One vendor did not even reply to Rector, and the last one only offered a demo without analyzing the use case.

“WithSecure™ performed several tests in our environment, and it soon became clear that this was the best solution for us: it was efficient and consumed very little resources. In addition, the solution for virtual environments really met our expectations. But the essential point remains the trust established with WithSecure, very accessible both at the sales and technical levels,” resumes Florian Stillitano.

A relatively simple technical installation

Given the number of remote sites with low bandwidth for some of them, Rector chose WithSecure™ Elements Endpoint Protection with its Cloud based centralized management console. Regardless of the geographical location of workstations, the console provides a simple and intuitive way to track and manage their security level. Rector also chose WithSecure™ Policy Manager to manage its virtual servers, which provides a level of safety equivalent to that expected of a physical machine, while streamlining system resources.

Deployment was carried through Active Directory with automatic uninstallation of the existing security solution. Among the solution’s major features, the light installation package made the switch possible in a few days and the signature databases are deployed between workstations without using Internet bandwidth.

Other features particularly acclaimed by Rector were the patch management feature that corrects vulnerabilities in third party applications daily, the user-friendliness of the solution, and the availability of the WithSecure™ and local partner teams. The partner, Clemessy, followed the project from POC to final deployment. “Our entire install base has nearly 800 endpoints. WithSecure has automatically uninstalled our old solution and installed the new one very quickly! A great time saver for us, as we were in a hurry,” adds Florian Stillitano.

Rapid deployment

Deployment gradually progresses as it includes many mobile clients, as well as small sites that are not accessible all the time. Rector believes it has accomplished 80% of its deployment in less than 6 months. “It was urgent for us because the license of our virtual solution was due to expire in February... we did not want to remain unprotected. And to facilitate the transition, WithSecure offered six months for free!” Today, WithSecure™ Elements Endpoint Protection solution protects more than 800 endpoints and 30 physical servers.

We are now engaged with WithSecure™ for years to come, and for all our subsidiaries worldwide! We have other projects going with WithSecure™, but they remain confidential for now. We will talk about them once the entire deployment is completed!”