Jeyes mops up viruses with managed security

A unified threat management system helps firm block malicious attacks

Household cleaning product company Jeyes has reduced the number of viruses and spam affecting its computer network by switching to a unified threat management (UTM) system.

The manufacturer of products including Parazone and Wet Ones signed a deal six months ago with UTM service provider Network Box, and is now blocking 130,000 malicious attacks to its network every month.

Before Network Box took over management of the firm’s security systems, Jeyes received 10,000 malicious emails and spam each month, which have now been
virtually eradicated.

‘The previous controls that were used for administering and monitoring network security were becoming increasingly difficult to manage in-house, and did not always provide sufficient reporting information to identify potential threats,’ said Martin Brookman, systems facilities manager at Jeyes.

‘In addition, the levels of email spam and growing sophistication of viruses were causing concern and were a constant distraction to our support team, which offers services to a number of internal UK and international sites.’

By plugging Network Box monitoring appliances into parts of Jeyes computer network the company can now detect viruses, spam, spyware and phishing emails in real time.

One member of Jeyes’ IT team worked almost full time protecting the company’s network from viruses and checking whether quarantined emails were spam or genuine correspondence.

‘But since switching to the system it has freed up an awful lot of resource,’ said Brookman.

‘As a small IT team, we wanted a solution that we didn’t have to update ourselves because the window of vulnerability is dependent on how quickly we can download security patches. We needed something that would automatically push updates to us and protect our network from the latest internet threats.’

Network Box is also providing content filtering services, which is helping Jeyes’ HR department fulfil its duty of protecting employees from offensive content, such as pornography.

‘A major concern was protecting our staff from offensive content and new blended threats such as spyware, trojans and phishing. Employers have a responsibility to protect their staff, and we take this very seriously,’ said Brookman.