Secure Agency

Lowe Lintas, one of India's premier

advertising agencies, with increased demand on their resources and a more

complex IT infrastructure was facing challenges fulfilling its promise to

deliver secure, timely information to its customers. As a company with limited

IT resources and eight major offices and more 10 small offices, Lintas was

forced to use a less-than-ideal system for communicating important documents and

information between offices.

Lintas has two applications that are widely used in all the

offices. One is a customized ERP system using Oracle as the database-all users

connect via Citrix to access this application. Apart from this they have the

knowledge management developed using SQL Server and a web based interface. The

organization runs on a star and spoke network with redundant arms. All the major

branches are connected to the head office via 64 kbps leased line, which is

being used for both voice and data.

With mission critical files being exchanged between

locations and also with clients, the security at all levels needed to be robust

and efficient bandwidth made available for the transfers. Explaining the

scenario, Commodore Ray D'Souza, director Systems & Technology says, “As

there is no dedicated IT staff at all the locations, solution had to be

straightforward, easy to implement, and self-managing.”

The agency needed a security solution to improve efficiency.

After implementing GajShield, Lintas realized it could secure its multiple

offices without hiring additional IT staff or purchasing expensive and

proprietary equipment. Ray opined that being from a naval background innovation

and cost effectiveness was the only way of life. For example the company wanted

to save cost on an e-mail client and looked at innovating with Gajshield

product.

Lintas has deployed GajShield Firewall Appliances in various

Lowe Lintas's locations such as Lower Parel (Mumbai), Express Tower (Nariman

Point-Mumbai) etc. Ray expresses that it was a fast, hassle-free installation as

Lintas went live with GajShield services the same day that the services were

downloaded onto the company's dedicated PCs. There was immediate secure,

seamless communication within hours. Lintas was transmitting files and

information securely via the Internet using GajShield to its Mumbai head office

and branch offices.

Some of the features that have been implemented by Lowe

Lintas are inspection firewall and intrusion prevention system.

The solution also allows a reliable VPN connectivity for

traveling users to allow access to their emails. VPN tunnels were established to

allow individual users to have easy access to their emails even while they are

traveling. The objective was to allow them to have a single mailbox and not

having to forward their mails to another email id when they were traveling. The

cumbersome part was that users had to manage both the mailboxes, whereas now

with the Gajshield implementation of the mailbox, they access their email on the

LAN when they are in office and while they are traveling they just connect via

VPN and access the web mail. As a result now the user needs to manage only one

mailbox. The mail client is also from Gajshield.

Also, using GajShield's managed anti-spam service is

protecting Lowe Lintas' email traffic from spams. They had selected this

particular service option so that spams could be stopped at the source itself.

So there is a decrease in the bandwidth consumption as the spam mails are

stopped and restricted at GajShield's Internet server.

Without making a substantial investment or having dedicated

IT staff at each location, Lintas has been able to create a secured environment

for its entire business. This is directly impacting the efficiency of the agency

where time to market and deliver is minimum.

Minu Sirsalewala



minuvs@cybermedia.co.in