Secure information flow for Porter Novelli Public Relations
European IT Director Mark Litton explains how Porter Novelli
reduced maintenance costs and time spent performing system upgrades by implementing Stonesoft’s
StoneGate Firewall Cluster and Virtual Private Network.
Porter Novelli is one of the world’s top public relations (PR) firms, with employees working in
nearly 100 cities. Porter Novelli has clients in the commercial, government and not-for-profit
sectors in 60 countries.
The company’s network needed to be as secure as possible as it carries confidential client
information pertaining to everyday PR business as well as financial data for the company and
accounting systems, which are being centralised in the UK for the whole of Europe. Porter Novelli
worked with Stonesoft partner, business solutions provider RnD Systems to develop a new solution.
“Before implementing StoneGate, upgrading the system was a huge job and I often spent whole weekends performing the work. What used to take a whole weekend can now be completed in a matter of hours, and during working hours. What’s more, where we have clustered firewalls, if one firewall engine should ever fail, the other engine takes over.”
Mark Litton, European IT Director
More efficient upgrades and reduced running costs
The cost of maintaining the previous single firewall in each of the UK offices, which had been in place for 12 years, was escalating rapidly. While the system remained secure, the technology was out-of-date and Porter Novelli required improved functionality, including the ability to upgrade and maintain the system more easily.
Porter Novelli deployed StoneGate firewall cluster with active-active setup in two locations –
London and Banbury, and a StoneGate appliance firewall in Leeds – homes of the UK offices, and has
plans to deploy further solutions in other European countries. What impressed Porter Novelli about
the Stonesoft solution is that it provides a clustered solution where both firewall engines are
active at the same time providing both load balancing and redundancy.
Furthermore, StoneGate proved to be the more cost-effective for Porter Novelli to install and to maintain, than it would have been to simply maintain the old system. Also it provides the ability to upgrade firewall engines remotely. By having clustered firewalls it is possible to take one firewall engine at a time offline - which allows the IT department to perform upgrades during office hours, as the remaining firewall engine continues to run.
Litton explained: “The StoneGate Platform provides the same high levels of security but is easier to manage over multiple locations. The centralised management of each of the firewall clusters, firewall appliances, VPNs and multilinked ISP connections allows a clear overview of the state of the network. It also allows remote management of the firewalls and the ability to take remote firewall engines offline and to perform routine maintenance such as firewall engine software revision upgrades.”
He continued: “before implementing StoneGate, upgrading the system was a huge job and I often
spent whole weekends performing the work. What used to take a whole weekend can now be completed in
a matter of hours, and during working hours. What’s more, where we have clustered firewalls, if one
firewall engine should ever fail, the other engine takes over.”
Porter Novelli has realised substantial cost savings by opting to move to StoneGate, reducing yearly maintenance costs to a quarter of what they used to be.
“The StoneGate Platform provides the same high levels of security but is easier to manage over multiple locations.”
Mark Litton, European IT Director
VPN, VoIP, compliance reporting and excellent support – all enabled by Stonesoft
The solution also caters for site to site virtual private network (VPN) as well as remote VPN for around 40 individual users. Litton says that although VPN was not one of the main drivers for choosing the StoneGate solution, Porter Novelli did require VPN access, so it was a welcome enhancement to the network.
Porter Novelli is now also working on its VoIP network. The latest version of the firewall software includes the traffic prioritisation and quality of service (QoS) capabilities needed to guarantee good quality calls over the internet. The company expects to have the system up and running by the end of 2006.
Litton has praise for the excellent follow-up customer service he has received from Stonesoft: “ With regards to dealing with any issues that may arise with the system (which are extremely rare) or seeking advice on upgrades and project enquiries, we have found support prompt and timely, with enough UK-based support to answer all our needs,” he says. “We have made some complicated LAN and WAN network changes recently, and the senior engineer from Stonesoft was particularly good with providing advice and support. It has always been possible to do what we wanted to do.”
Finally, Porter Novelli is also investigating applying more of the numerous additional applications available with StoneGate such as the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and automated reporting. “The need to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley legislation means that we have to be able to produce reports about intrusion as well as quarterly reports on activity. So the additional functionality should prove very useful.”
“We have made some complicated LAN and WAN network changes recently, and the senior engineer from Stonesoft was particularly good with providing advice and support. It has always been possible to do what we wanted to do.”
Mark Litton, European IT Director
About Porter Novelli
Porter Novelli is one of the world’s leading public relations agencies and is represented in all major markets. Porter Novelli was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1972 and is a part of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE:OMC), a leading global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company.http://www.porternovelli.com/