SAIL: Ensuring Smooth Sail

Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is the leading
steel-making company in India. Stressing that in the present scenario of
cut-throat competition right decision at right time is most important for
competitive advantage, Deo Murti Thakur, joint director (CC&C), SAIL, points
out that IT is the biggest facilitator in this endeavour. "The IT group is
always trying to put its sincere efforts so that SAIL should have all the
relevant information to take the right decision at the right time," he
says, informing that SAIL's IT department had commissioned some major projects
in the past year.

Ensuring a continuous flow of information and high availability
of the network is one of the key tasks before Thakur and his team. "The IT
department has to ensure that failure in IT system should be minimum or almost
zero," he says. And one of the serious challenges posed to the availability
of SAIL's network is from virus attacks and other types of intrusions.
"These threats are serious whether they are virus attacks and or something
else," Thakur says.

In order to control all kinds of threats to SAIL's network
posed either by Internet or by a mail, SAIL decided to go for a solution that
can ensure that all threats are controlled at the gateway level itself. "We
decided to install a system at the gateway level of the LAN and WAN of
SAIL," says Thakur.

However finding the right solution wasn't an easy job given
the fact that the market is flooded with scores of security solutions.
"There are many types of security system. Some are software based and some
are hardware based," he observes. The other challenge was to ensure that
deploying a security system should not affect network performance. "Putting
different security system for different applications create lot of problems
which slow down the network," Thakur adds.

With all these factors in mind, SAIL analyzed a number of
solutions available in the market before finalising Fortinet. "SAIL
analyzed almost all types of security systems and Fortinet proved to be the best
for us," Thakur says. The most appealing feature of the Fortinet solution
according to Thakur is that it is a hardware-based system with multiple security
features in one solution. "It meets all our security requirements as it has
Firewall, IDS/IPS, anti-virus, Spam control, user authentications for Internet
and more importantly for more than one Internet lease line connections," he
points out.

After installation of the Fortinet solution, SAIL's LAN at its
two corporate offices in New Delhi is now completely secured. "No virus
threat that can disrupt work or mail has been experienced. Our interaction with
plants and outside never got hampered. No data loss or mail loss has occured.
This has created smooth working environment at our corporate office," says
Thakur of his experience after deploying the Fortinet's solution. Moreover,
the Fortinet solution has also given SAIL better Internet management
capabilities. "Now we are able to connect and disconnect Internet users as
per

requirement. Everything can be controlled through a consol only," he adds.

Rajneesh De

rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in