Business Challenge: Unearthing investment opportunities
As a business, the challenge for Gimv is to identify investment opportunities. It sees more than 1,000 companies each year, all needing a thorough examination of their investment potential. “We exchange a lot of sensitive data, through a lot of emails,” says Kristof Poppe, IT Manager, Gimv. “Data security is critical. It’s not a question of ‘if’ you’re being attacked, it’s ‘when’.”
For Poppe, the task is to balance corporate security with end-user flexibility. He wants to allow Gimv staff to work from a device and location of their choice, whilst having a necessary overview of the threat landscape.
Solutions: Enterprise cloud protection
Gimv has worked with Check Point solutions since 2012. “We had another provider, but Check Point was the first to introduce a threat emulation feature. We tested it, were very pleased with it, and immediately put it into production,” says Poppe.
Since then, the business has steadily moved to cloud, with an external data center and Office 365. The transition to the cloud urged them to look for stronger security solutions that understand cloud threats.
Check Point CloudGuard, a family of cloud security products, is designed to prevent the latest fifth generation (Gen V) cyber-attacks targeting enterprise cloud services. The portfolio, part of the Check Point Infinity Architecture, includes CloudGuard SaaS, CloudGuard Dome9 and CloudGuard IaaS. CloudGuard SaaS provides Gimv with unmatched protection for their software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
“CloudGuard is a ‘set and forget’ solution. It gives end users the confidence to know that the mail in their mailbox has already passed security checks and is secure.”
– Kristof Poppe, IT Manager, Gimv
Results: Securing the entire environment
Poppe says Check Point secures Gimv, and simplifies day-to-day operations: “The main benefit of Check Point, with our distributed environment, is that we have a single control center for everything; a single pane of glass.”
The integration with the CloudGuard SaaS is particularly useful, he adds: “Since we’re only a small IT team, making things simple to maintain is very important. One vendor, with a comprehensive portfolio of solutions, makes security easy to manage across the entire environment, from our external data center to our remote offices.”
The latest upgrade to CloudGuard SaaS, he continues, was simple to install and to take into production: “We have one dashboard providing a complete overview of our Office365 mail environment. The next step is to integrate our SharePoint Online environment.”
On a typical day, Gimv receives 1,000 emails an hour. CloudGuard SaaS flags all suspicious mails, removing any threats before they arrive at a user’s inbox. “It’s a ‘set and forget’ solution,” Poppe states. “It gives end users the confidence to know that the mail in their mailbox has already passed security checks and is secure. Prior to CloudGaurd SaaS we needed to check several systems to see if all was ok. Now, with a single enquiry, we can find all the reports we need.”
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