Footy team scales-up security

Rugby League fans, regardless of affiliation, tend to revere the Wests Tigers football club for its history. The product of a merger in 2000 of two of Sydney’s oldest Rugby League teams – the Balmain Tigers and the Western Suburbs Magpies – the club’s IT requirements have evolved in recent years, leading management to seek the assistance of a reseller to optimise security of its network.

Based at Concord Oval in Sydney’s inner west, the club has 35 full time employees in administration and marketing in addition to players, coaching and support staff. When the decision was made to overhaul the IT security infrastructure, Wests Tigers recruited Partner IT – a Sydney and Illawarra region IT services firm – to deliver a messaging security solution to protect the network from traditional threats such as viruses, spam and spyware, as well as emerging threats such as rootkits and bots.

On the recommendation of Partner IT, Wests Tigers upgraded from an existing Symantec solution to Trend Micro Client Server Messaging Security for SMB (CSM for SMB), a single, all-in-one multi-layer solution. According to Partner IT, the security application is designed to protect all system files and data on the network, including company wide documents, spreadsheets and accounting system.

“We decided to migrate to Trend Micro on the recommendation from Partner IT. After their initial audit we were concerned by their findings that only 60 percent of our machines were protected and the majority were out of date on definitions,” said Kirsty Halfnights, account executive at West Tigers Rugby League Football Club.

“By allowing Partner IT to take ownership of our site via a managed services partnership it allowed for regular reporting and monitoring to ensure that we are safe and all of our machines were being monitored.”

According to Halfnights, Partner IT was recommended by a Wests Tigers staff member. She added that the club was pleased to find an IT company that takes ownership of customer sites, regardless of whether they have supplied the network equipment or not.

“This ensures that we can focus on our business and not IT to complete our work in an efficient manner,” she said.

Its relationship with IT brands including Trend Micro, Partner IT focuses on providing start-to-finish IT solutions for local SMBs. Following an initial audit of the Wests Tigers network, the reseller discovered an “unmanaged” installation of an antivirus application and only 60 percent of computers had the program actively installed.
Tom Galeski, Wests Tigers account manager for Partner IT said: “We are finding more and more that most businesses don’t plan for the worst case scenario. While things are working no one asks questions but once you get a virus outbreak or Trojan attack, it’s too late.”

The main concerns of Wests Tigers were to protect confidential data from theft or modification, keep its office computers and networks threat-free and available, as well as prevent inappropriate content from distracting employees and affecting productivity. Partner IT evaluated the situation and took a ‘maintenance-made-easy’ approach to prevent the likelihood of any disasters at the hands of Wests Tigers employees, many of whom are not particularly tech savvy. The reseller recognised that although the club’s IT infrastructure and systems are comparatively small in scale; the brand is well-known, therefore protection from a potential IT disaster is integral to maintaining the team and club’s reputation.

“Trend Micro’s solution was an easy choice as it offers high level protection through a simple, single user interface,” said Galeski. “The demand for a simple to install, simple to manage, easy to report antivirus/spyware solution is growing at a fast rate, and Trend Micro allows our skills as a premium managed service provider to offer scheduled reporting and centralised management quickly and easily.”

According to Galeski, the Trend Micro solution automatically protects data and resources against increasingly sophisticated Internet threats.

“The benefits we’ve gained from using the single interface, centralised network monitoring and simple reporting have been great. We’ve demonstrated immediate ROI, with less time spent administering anti-virus definitions and patch management reporting,” he said.

Trend Micro CSM for SMB also supports scheduled automated reporting, eliminating the need to manually generate network reports. Galeski claimed that once reports are emailed they can be reviewed and action can be taken immediately if required. He also commented that the inclusion of patch management in the Trend Micro solution is a significant advantage.

“As with most small to medium businesses, Wests Tigers doesn’t have the time or budget to implement additional applications to monitor Windows patch updates but CSM for SMB lets us easily see what patches are required on which machines and when,” he said.

Trend Micro stated that the application saves SMBs time and effort. The single-install application quickly protects PCs and servers through integrated deployment and management, which eliminates the cost and effort of purchasing and managing threat-specific products. Galeski added that a unique outbreak defence protects against rapidly-spreading threats earlier – before virus signatures are available – without intervention. Accordingly, the real-time spyware protection stops ‘drive-by downloads’ automatically installing from the Web and threatening Wests Tigers’ data security.

CSM for SMB also allows Partner IT to check Wests Tigers’ PCs and server health using at-a-glance status via the Web-based security dashboard from any connected computer with an Internet connection. From this centrally managed console, Partner IT receives proactive alerts and can view automatically generated reports.

Galeski claimed the application allows for better insight into the health and threat-readiness of a network.

“Trend Micro’s solution was an easy choice as it offers high level protection through a simple, single user interface,” said Galeski.

He added that the reseller offers several additional services to clients through its partner program. These include IT strategic planning, server and network support, business systems, IT procurement, Internet and telephony services, and website and database development. According to Galeski, managed IT services is a key focus for the reseller.

“Great momentum recently has been seen in our consulting arm in the focus of aligning IT delivery to the strategic business requirements before IT investments are made. Partner IT provides our customers a “one stop shop” for IT services,” he explained.