A Secure Mudra

Instituted in 1980, the Mudra Group is oneof the leading marketing communications networks in India, that offers creativebusiness and total branding solutions to itsclients. The company's customized andcollaborative approach helps its clients, buildenduring and profitable brands. The group hasone of the widest networks in the countrywith eight full-service offices and 12 specializedbusiness units.

THE REQUIREMENT

Mudra needed a solution, that could addressthe challenges they faced across multiplelocations, such as the Internet policyimplementation, optimal usage ofbandwidth, Internet redundancy andload balancing. Also, secured accessfirewall and VPN integrated usermanagement with existing HRdatabase alongwith integratedreporting with existing HR appli-cation was also a concern for thecompany. This was necessarybecause Mudra had an IT policy inplace, which clearly spells out theInternet policies.

In the absence ofa proper control mechanism it wasdifficult for Sebastian Joseph,Executive VP and Head-Techno-logy, Mudra Group, to implementthe policies.

FINDING RESOLUTIONS

One of the main challenges accor-ding to Joseph, was unproductiveuse of Internet bandwidth especiallyduring the peak-hours. “Some usersrequired access to certain sites, to help themin their work music, video, social networking,etc. Opening up access, to these sites for allusers, resulted in bandwidth getting choked.Hence, selective blocking of sites was required.Similarly all Web-based e-mails had to beblocked, since all official communications areto be done only through the official e-mailsystem,” shared Joseph. Illegal and spywareinfected downloads driven by malware lacedwebsites and blended threats entering throughInternet gateways needed to be curbed forMudra. Spyware often slowed the machines and left the choked network gasping forbandwidth. Instant messengers (IM), P2P, ultraproxy, and others, futher compounded the problem.

“Considering that Mudra is a leading brandmanagement company, it needed a compre-hensive, single window security solution tosolve major business challenges, including basicgateway protection, Internet connectivity withfailover across multiple branch offices,optimized bandwidth allocation and on-appliance reporting,” said Sanjay Sehgal,Head-Enterprise Sales, Cyberoam.

Joseph said that in order to ensure optimaluse of multiple bandwidth links, it had to beterminated on a single device, that would takecare of load balancing as well as fail-over.

As far as the secured access was concerned,Joseph needed a secure VPN connection for itsvarious branches for internal communicationand application access over Internet. Otherconditions included that the user, logging intoany branch office should be ensconced in asingle security policy microcosm, irrespectiveof the place of his logging. Some of theemployees, specifically IT resources, login tothe main servers for troubleshooting fromoutside offices. This necessitated secured VPNaccess. “We were very clear in optimal use ofbandwidth and we evaluated many solutionproviders, but then closed with Cyberoam, asour requirements were fulfilled by Cyberoam,”said Joseph.

Thus Sebastian and his team decided todeploy Cyberoam UTM — CR100i appliances atmultiple locations. Cyberoam's purpose-builthardware and security-hardened OS, providedMudra with breakthrough performance,connectivity and security.

CUSTOMIZING REQUIREMENTS

Mudra implemented IPSec VPN amongst itsbranches and mobile users using Cyberoam.This ensured that the users can connectsecurely from any location and use theorganization's resources. Also threat-freetunneling technology-driven VPN ensures, thatall the traffic is securely encrypted and nomalware sneaks through it. Apart from statefulpacket inspection and address filtering,Cyberoam's ICSA and Checkmark certified,enterprise-class firewall provides protocolfiltering and anomaly detection capabilities andweeds out harmful network traffic, ensuringtotal business connectivity andsecurity to all users. The denial ofservice protection of Cyberoamfirewall secures Mudra network frominternal and external hackingattempts. “Cyberoam identity-basedUTM fulfilled these requirementsand in addition helped the HR teamcentrally manage employee Internetaccess, at various branch locations,”Sehgal added.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

Cyberoam achieves optimalbandwidth RoI using a dual prongedapproach. The Web content filteringsolution curbs all non-productivesurfing. The content filteringsolution is based on a database of82 categories and more than 44million URLs. This gives theadministrator team the flexibility, tocreate professional profile-basedInternet access policies. All instantmessenger sites are controlled, so are all theHTTP and FTP-based file transfers.

“All P2P application sites are blocked,controlling spyware entry from this widely usedapplication. The Internet pipe, which wasinitially clogged by unrestricted surfing, is nowenough to meet the entire Internet needs ofMudra. This did not compromise on thefunctional and creative aspects of theorganization. All relevant audio and videostreaming is now much smoother and hasslefree. All the site-based restrictions can beimplemented for individuals, groups and as pertime bands. Not to forget Cyberoam is indeedcost-effective.” added Joseph.

One more advantage of deploying theCyberoam solution was its bandwidthmanagement solution. The extremely granularsolution vests the administrator with the policy-based power, to grant and prioritize bandwidth,to a user or service, as per convenient timeband.

MINAKSHI SHETTY(minakshis@cybermedia.co.in)