Firewall High Availability-Securing Swiss e-Banking
The continual introduction of technology and the development of the Internet has increased competition among banking organizations and encouraged the formulation of new banking products and services to become accessible to both personal and business customers through electronic distribution otherwise known as e-banking.
To help banks and finance institutions to keep breast of the latest IT technology, RTC AG (Real-
Time Center), IT outsourcing and banking software specialists have developed IBIS, an applications
platform which allows end users to manage and process various IT products and services depending on
their individual requirements, without the need to invest in costly new technology and training.
It is not only the banking industry who has increased the challenges faced by their IT systems.
Swiss central and local governmental administrations as well as larger municipalities have also
begun to make high and often very specific demands against the IT infrastructure.
RTC's products and services also help government bodies to overcome problems resulting from the geographical distribution of IT networks, the vast array of system requirements to carry out increasingly complex tasks and the general security of their IT systems.
Battling with poor reliability
The comprehensive security management of RTC is based on many years of experience and close
cooperation with their customers. RTC's security policy is to offer their customers a two-tier
firewall system: one firewall to protect the internal application level zone and a second firewall,
which operates as an Internet perimeter gateway for increased security - both firewalls coming from
different vendors.
The company had originally two municipalities have also begun to make high and often very specific demands against the IT infrastructure. RTC's products and services also help government bodies to overcome problems resulting from the geographical distribution of IT networks, the vast array of system requirements to carry out increasingly complex tasks and the general security of their IT systems.
Built-in functionalities
RTC was already a satisfied user of StoneBeat load balancing and high availability software and as this was an integral part of the StoneGate firewall and VPN solution they were keen to put it to the test.
"StoneBeat ran well and is still running well today. It was a logical decision, once StoneGate
successfully passed our product testing, to replace one of our existing firewall solutions with the
StoneGate solution," says
Maximillian Hoesle, Leader, Corporate Security, RTC.
We have found a lot of our customers' technical requirements are met by the functionalities, which StoneGate offers as standard and that other vendors would charge as extra. The total cost of ownership of our security system has been reduced by StoneGate, both by the number of features already included in the product as standard and by the number of new features which are on the road map to be included in future releases.
StoneGate comprises a reinforced firewall offering powerful network security with built-in high availability and load balancing for continuous firewall uptime, a virtual private network powered by multi-link technology for redundant, always-on Internet connections to multiple Internet Service providers (ISP), a high availability function which enables customisable clustering for continuous load balancing of firewall, Internet connections, VPN, Web servers, and other information services and its own hardened Linux operating system.
Ease of deployment
The first firewall replacement was carried out in 2002. The planning, rollout, configuration and testing of an enterprise cluster took about 4 to 5 working days per customer firewall. "We found StoneGate very quick and simple to install, in fact much easier than both the other firewalls we have experienced," recounts Hoesle. "The remote update/upgrade functionality combined with the fall back feature has saved us a lot of time and organisational overheads."
"With StoneGate, because the OS, firewall, load balancing and high availability are all integrated there is no patch management for the separate functions - this has been a huge benefit to the system management. We see StoneGate as a high quality firewall and VPN which is a very well designed, well implemented security solution and extremely stable giving us the high availability we required. Everything that we, and our customers were expecting from a 'real' security product has been fulfilled. If you are thinking about moving from a legacy firewall, I believe that StoneGate provides the best 'bullet proof' migration scenario from any other firewall product," concludes Hoesle.
"We found StoneGate very quick and simple to install, in fact much easier than both the other firewalls we have experienced."
Maximillian Hoesle, Leader, Corporate Security, RTC
About RTC
RTC has successfully offers software products and IT-outsourcing solutions for over 30 years. Its customers include banks, service providers, administrative departments, and governmental organizations. Having developed IBIS, a standard solution for banks, as well as the desktop- and systemmanagement product RENO Suite, RTC has gathered extensive knowledge in the migration and management of large bank applications and in operating mainframe systems and server environments. RTC provides know-how in designing and managing complex networks, up to the highest level of security solutions including firewalls. Filing- and backup-services, a fully equipped printing and shipping centre, and comprehensive education- and helpdesk services complete RTC's portfolio.
RTC's headquarter is located in Bern-Liebefeld with an additional branch office in Zurich. Two data centers are maintained by RTC in the Bern area. With approximately 400 employees RTC generated a total revenue of 135 Mio. CHF in the year 2002. RTC operates in accord with the internationally accepted security standard and was the first company in Switzerland to receive BS7799-2:2002 certification. The security standard was implemented into the existing ISO 9001:2000 certified management system.
