The FINANCIAL -- Online retail group Schneider is protecting its email and Web traffic with Cisco IronPort Hosted Email Security and Cisco ScanSafe Web Security cloud-based services.

These two solutions provide the retailer with a comprehensive package of email security, spam protection and Web security. Mobile user devices, too, are integrated into the services through Cisco AnyConnect™ Secure Mobility Client. For Schneider, the benefits are a higher level of security and a significant reduction in the effort involved in security management. The solutions also provide centralized policy management for all of the company's Internet breakouts. At the same time, Schneider has been able to improve its customer service, because the cloud acts as a buffer, preventing the loss of email. The retailer's IT team can now concentrate on its core tasks again.

As Cisco reported, with around 250,000 inbound email messages a day, Schneider had been experiencing a steady rise in Web traffic, which meant expending more and more effort on managing its conventional security solutions. To prevent data traffic jams, the company had 15 decentralized breakouts in branch offices, forming a bridge to the Internet. Each access node was equipped with its own anti-spam and anti-virus engines.

Integralis, a security solutions vendor and long-standing Cisco Registered Partner, offloaded security into a cloud-based solution consisting of Cisco IronPort Hosted Email Security and Cisco ScanSafe Web Security components. The IronPort spam protection now blocks the flood of spam using a multitier scanning architecture. At the heart of the solution is a Cisco Reputation Filter, which checks email messages against a database in real time. The Cisco IronPort Context Adaptive Scanning Engine analyzes the content and structure of every message. Together, these technologies can eliminate more than 99 percent of the spam.

"Today, we don't get the 250,000 emails a day that we used to: our servers only receive around 5,000 – namely, those that are important for our business operations," explains Arne Klingauf, head of the project in Schneider's IT team. "The Cisco cloud acts like a buffer, storing all email for at least 24 hours. That extends our maintenance window and helps us ensure that we don't lose email from customers, even if there's a system outage." The new solution has greatly reduced the IT department's workload, allowing the staff to concentrate in full on their core tasks again.

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