Card retailer Clinton Cards has ditched a pool of security platforms in favour of a single system to protect its servers and desktops against malware.

After a security infrastructure review, it emerged that Clinton’s previous systems from a range of different security vendors were failing to meet the retailer’s expectations.

“We needed our security software to catch threats at an earlier stage in the process,” said Clinton Cards’ group IT manager Keith Woodbridge.

“The problem with specific signatures is that until somebody has submitted an
incident and engineers readjust the solution, you are going to be under threat, as suppliers would take 48 hours to fix the problem, sometimes longer.”

The new Prevx-supplied software detects behavioural traits of illegal software and
destroys threats, such as malware, advanced forms of spyware, trojans, root-kits and bots, which often go unnoticed.

Implementation of the system has been completed across the company’s IT, including its virtualised server environment and computers at its 1,000-strong store network. But Clinton's will continue to work on its security set-up and more improvements are scheduled to be made after Christmas.

“Security changes and evolves on a regular basis,” said Woodbridge.

“We are already very secure, but you have to be a jump ahead of the game. You put something in place today and sit back thinking ‘I am protected’, but hackers are already working on ways to get around what you have today, so you have got to try and keep up with that, which requires investment and constant evaluation of what you are doing and how you are doing it,” he said.