For a Secure Enterprise

Ballarpur Industries Ltd manufactures over 60 % of India’s value added and
specialty paper, and accounts for nearly 20 % of the overall paper production in
the country. The company also sports the largest distribution network with 16
regional offices and more than 100 exclusive distributors.

The quality intensive BILT is well recognized for its products in the
domestic as well as international markets. With paper exports worth 15,000
tonnes per annum to 15 countries across the world, BILT has been awarded the
coveted Capexil award for highest quality export, for four consecutive years
(1995 through 1999). For a production giant the size of BILT, transitioning to
an eBusiness model would entail a colossal IT infrastructure and a greater need
to safeguard its online transactions. But that’s exactly what iBILT finds
itself doing as the technology arm of the country’s largest manufacturer of
paper–BILT.

The company is taking a pioneering step by leading technology and eBusiness
initiatives in an industry often termed as "traditional." But with the
changing global landscape, BILT is certain that the competitive advantages of
eBusiness will significantly impact their revenues and future business. With the
business being mainly B2B, these advantages include automating and integrating
BILT’s supply chain systems with trading partners and business processes;
lowering transaction costs associated with identifying, negotiating and
purchasing from multiple suppliers; cutting the use of low value-add
intermediary brokers and dealers to reach customers; expanding the universe of
buyers and sellers; and consolidating and customizing multiple sources of
pricing information, real-time news and industry data.

BILT currently has about 1,700 desktops spread over 16 locations. Some of
these locations have just migrated from dial-up connectivity to leased lines. In
the next 12-18 months, BILT is going to connect all 16 locations through leased
lines. Other than that a WAN, ERP and database management software are currently
at various stages of implementation. This will eventually connect all its
locations and give all locations access to critical business applications.

BILT has initiated a massive technology drive with a planned investment of
about $10 million to adopt the benefits of the Internet, the Web and other IT
applications into increased efficiencies and therefore better its bottomlines
thought an e-business model. "The paper industry in India is increasingly
getting IT-conscious, and being at the cutting edge of technology is always one
of our primary requirements," said Amrit Sethi, manager (operations), iBILT
Technologies. For an entity that produces over 270,000 TPA, this requirement is
easier said than done.

Security stays on top

"E-business necessarily requires to be secure if it has to succeed.
Unless you give that assurance to business partners, your business model is not
going to work," says Sethi. Security stays at the top of iBILT’s list
when it comes to e-business, a model that will finally link about 600
distributors, suppliers and customers online across the country and overseas–in
small towns as well as large cities. This is expected to account for nearly 85%
business for BILT.

It was this need that propelled BILT to look for reliable, and robust
security solutions in the market. Besides, the company’s top-most concern was
to completely eliminate the possibility of attacks on the network, intrusions
and other kinds of vandalism once the e-business solution was ready for
implementation.

"We were looking for high-quality security solutions that would be hard
to break, easy to administer, implement and use, and also intuitive in
nature," said Sethi. After a thorough research in the market, BILT selected
3-4 products available in the market for a final evaluation. BILT finally zeroed
in on CA’s award winning security solution–eTrust. Not only did the product
offer the best-of -breed functionality, tight integration and bulletproof
security, it was also very easy to learn and use. "We needed an integrated
product as we were opening up several doors to our partners and we needed a
simple but effective solution. We also received excellent feedback on Computer
Associates and its products from the market," he said.

On this $10 million initiative, iBILT managing director and CIO Ashok Tiwari
says–"We are embarking on a journey to create a robust eBusiness model
and understand the criticality of security in the networked environment. Only if
we are secure, will it build confidence among our business partners, and provide
that extra assurance to transact online and, thereby, enable us to achieve
better returns. This model is a win-win situation for both BILT and our partners
since it will help reduce cost of transactions and time to market."

E-trust keeps the faith

"Rather than waiting for an intrusion or an attack and then installing
security solutions, we have made provisions in advance to avoid any
vulnerabilities. Such an event will not only derail the implementation
timetable, but also if it happens in the initial phases where we have the first
few partners on board, it can reduce confidence on this business model at the
very onset–both with partners and internally" said Sethi.

The eTrust Firewall helps BILT enforce security policies throughout the
enterprise, safeguarding all mission-critical network resources, while eTrust
Intrusion Detection will combine surveillance and alert capabilities to stop
network attacks and abuses. The product works full-time to provide real-time,
automatic detection of threats to the network and its resources. Finally, eTrust
Access Control will provide the essential eBusiness element–regulating access
to critical business assets. BILT has several applications running on its
servers and access to these applications is restricted depending on the function
of the employee or the nature of partnership. Access will need to be regulated
as per parameters set for each of them.

BILT’s eBusiness infrastructure will have many components in the form of
user databases, administration tools, and logs spanning from operating systems,
to applications, Internet, virtual private network or the wide area network. It
will therefore be critical to have a central management tool to monitor the
entire security environment. eTrust Access control will do the needful here, by
defining policies that prohibit unauthorized system access, and
"harden" server operating systems.

Once the entire IT setup is rolled out as per the master plan, the eTrust
security solutions will protect the company’s entire network spread across 42
locations accessed from across the world, covering all its businesses including
paper, food and chemicals. The solutions will work together to provide BILT with
a system that will provide defense against Internet threats, offer secure
seamless access within the "extended" enterprise, and finally, manage
and monitor the entire security infrastructure. The ease of use is a boon during
the roll out phase. As Sethi mentioned, "it hardly takes any training for
the implementation team to work on eTrust".

Managing business, building a future with eTrust

Meanwhile, eTrust–by maintaining extreme vigil across the enterprise–will
ensure that BILT’s customers, distributors and employees conduct transactions
and other activities with trust and that the systems, applications, and networks
are safe from intruders and unauthorized access. This trust will ultimately help
improve the trust among the partners and encourage them to use this model of
doing business and this BILT strongly believes will translate into a better,
bottom line–all managed in a strong, secure environment.

Team DQ