Case Study: Securing clouds makes sense for Fremantle

The six-person IT unit for the City of Fremantle manages a network for 300 users in 10 locations across WA's port city - as well as seven websites including the Council's corporate site, an intranet and tourism and marketing sites.

The council runs a VMware environment which has brought savings but "requires state-of-the-art protection", says John Pavy, manager of information technology.

According to Pavy, Fremantle is one of the largest metropolitan retail centres outside of Perth and has long been known as "WA's other capital".

He says it's the responsibility of the local government authority to maintain and promote this character through better services along with value for ratepayers.

The council is actively improving its efficiency and effectiveness through business planning, competitive practices, benchmarking and performance management.

Within its corporate services arm, the IT business unit constantly monitors technological developments to ensure the organisation's information systems are contributing to the council's services.

However, the council's in-house messaging security software was overwhelmed by a vast volume of spam. It was receiving 10,000 emails every day and only "1800 were genuine", says Pavy.

Facing constant attack

"The in-house spam filter and anti-virus software were continually under attack, representing a huge waste of our bandwidth," says Pavy. "Because of the enormous volumes, the software would regularly lock up and block all incoming emails, interrupting productivity and wasting IT staff time to sort the mess out."

One of the greatest risks to the City of Fremantle from malware hidden in spam and on suspect websites is damage to its network, resulting in downtime, he says.

While there has been only one successful attack in recent years, and the council's internal risk reduction strategies limited the damage to a few desktops, it proved the in-house "security solution was anything but secure".

When the council's IT team came across Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology, it spent a year trialing various providers to test their products' effectiveness, exploring different configurations to maximise messaging security efficiency, says Pavy.

The team chose MessageLabs' range of email security products, including Email Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus; Image Control and Content Control; Web Security Anti-Spyware Anti-Virus; and URL Filtering, all of which are hosted security services.

Once the trials were completed the council approached MessageLabs, who then passed the details to  Tony Estrano, account manager at its WA-based integrator partner,  L7 Solutions.

Read on for more...