March News Release for 2010

Datacraft tightens email and web security for Taiwan's National Open University

Singapore, 15 Mar 2010 - Following an extensive network security review at the National Open University (NOU) of Taiwan, Datacraft was entrusted to implement a high performance security solution for the university. The Datacraft solution is customised to the campus' unique network and will provide water-tight security against increasing amounts of spam and web-borne viruses; as well as new management tools for email content filter to improve usability and enable constant enhancements.

The NOU is a unique education establishment that offers distance learning programmes to students who wish to pursue a higher level of education. Students all over Taiwan can enroll for a wide range of courses that utilises a variety of study materials. These include offline textbooks and publications, and online tools such as TV and radio broadcasts, as well as audio and video contents. At peak times, email and web traffic rose drastically, which also led to increase in spam levels. The content filter solution used then was unable to cope with the high web traffic, and presented issues like maintenance costs too.

There would be a huge spike in email and web traffic at start of school terms and whenever we held events, said Evan Chen, IT Manager for NOU. This seemed to result in an exponential increase in spam which clogged up our bandwidth and slowed down our entire network. This meant that course information was not getting through to our students, affecting their study patterns. We needed to find an effective solution that would solve both the mail spam issues and meet our requirements for email content filter.

The first thing which Datacraft did was to analyse the University's security environment, and understand its business requirements and expected outcome of the new solution. The Datacraft team went on to recommend Cisco IronPort C360 and Cisco IronPort S660. The former unit is a high performance spam filter for heavy email traffic, which incorporates an outbound mail filter that allows NOU to manage its own email security policy. IronPort C360 also provides better executive reports for NOU to continuously improve upon its email policy.

On the other hand, IronPort S660 provides powerful web security features to contend with the growing number of malevolent web-based attacks. The appliance leverages Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO) and global threat correlation technology to help increase the intelligence and speed at which the latest internet threats are detected. With an easy-to-use content filter system and high performance guarantee, this solution addressed NOU's requirements precisely.

We recommended the Cisco IronPort solutions for their exceptional performance even during high traffic periods, said Benjamin Wang, General Manager for Datacraft Taiwan. It reduced the element of complexity in securing the university's vast operations by consolidating the gateway, which made the entire security infrastructure easier to manage.

Datacraft's five-year relationship with the university was further strengthened with this project. The client was particularly impressed with the team's extensive consultative approach, which helps uncover the root of the issue. Coupled with the team's technical expertise, this meant that the customised solutions will not only fulfill NOU's current requirements, but also provide a long-term, scalable solution.

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About Datacraft
Datacraft is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dimension Data plc (LSE:DDT), a US$4 billion leading global IT solutions and services provider. Datacraft operates in over 50 offices across 13 Asia Pacific countries. We help clients plan, build, support, manage, improve and innovate their IT infrastructures. Datacraft combines an expertise in networking, security, data centre, storage, Microsoft solutions and converged communications & contact centre technologies, with advanced skills in consulting, integration, training and managed services to craft IT solutions for businesses. For more information, please visit www.datacraft-asia.com.