Select countrySix people, 800 computers, 3700 users
Åke Engelke is IT manager for Salem municipality. He and his engineers are responsible for the operation of the municipality’s 800 computers, used by the municipality’s 905 employees and 2800 students. In August 2005, Salem was running antivirus software and a spam management product from two major security providers, and there were problems.
Lots of complaints when spam increased
The spam protection required one of the municipality’s engineers to enter a code in order to filter out the spam. It was therefore time-consuming and not always effective. It resulted in a large number of complaints, which grew even more when the spam protection was no longer updated. It caused disruption for employees, who had to spend hours every week dealing with spam and who feared that the spam would cause them to violate the municipality’s IT rules.
"We are a public authority, so, in principle, we are obliged to receive all email. However, we also have strict rules governing the municipality’s security, surfing and IT management. It’s really annoying for employees without extensive IT skills to receive email every day trying to entice them to visit porn sites or sites containing violence, or give away their passwords. We also handle strictly confidential information, which should not be made public", says Engelke.
"The complaints just stopped"
Salem municipality started by looking at four options, one of which was from a major provider. The result was that the providers were either seen as expensive or not serious, and not one of them could deliver antivirus protection for email together with an anti-spam solution - until Norman Online Protection came into the picture, that is. Salem tested the product in November and December.
"The test was clear-cut: all complaints about spam just stopped. When we asked what the users thought of the new email protection the answers were extremely positive", continues Engelke.
Five minutes to install, 24 hour support
Norman Online Protection is run externally, in other words, Norman filters the email before the municipality receives it. Installation is carried out via a phone call during which the email is identified.
"With an email security solution which is run externally, we don’t need a server and the service agreement, backup storage and problem solution that goes with it. If there’s a problem, we can ring up anytime, get expert assistance and say ’solve the problem’. We need to focus on other tasks, and there’s no way that we want spam traffic in our network", says Åke Engelke.
"With Norman Online Protection we now have a solution for everything to do with email, so spam is no longer a problem. With Norman Sandbox we don’t just search for viruses by known definitions but also by the behaviour of files. We’re really pleased with it", concludes Engelke.