Security Enterprise All-Stars

Guide to the '06 All-Stars Winners alphabetical listing WINNERS BY TECHNOLOGY Applications | LANs & Routers | Network Management | OS, Servers & Data Center | Security | Storage | WAN, VoIP & Convergence | Wireless & Mobility WINNERS BY INDUSTRY Construction | Education | Financial Services | Government | Healthcare | Manufacturing | Media | Retail | Travel/Transportation | Utilities Vendors to the All-Stars

Credit Suisse

Mapping application dependencies.

Credit Suisse's 14 global points of presence are the hub of its mission-critical activities, handling all of the firm's file transfer, e-mail, Web browsing and e-commerce functions. In October 2004, Colin Constable, director of network engineering at the New York bank, brought in start-up Skybox Security's Skybox Secure application to take daily snapshots of the POPs' security status and the numerous servers and applications within those infrastructures.

Skybox Secure identifies every network device and its application dependencies across the POPs, providing an accurate risk profile and letting the security team see and mitigate threats quickly and efficiently. Because Skybox Secure is automated, the bank was able to turn a semiannual, relatively ineffective and resource-intensive chore into a repeatable, scalable and timely process that delivers quality output to provide a daily risk-based view of the infrastructure and its many assets.

Having spent $700,000 to deploy Skybox Secure, Credit Suisse realized a full ROI in a little more than a year, with three-year ROI totaling $2.1 million.

Harvard Business School

An educational lockdown.

In July 2003, the Harvard Business School was walking a fine line between security and the need to provide an open, collaborative educational network environment. To cut vulnerabilities, it used Packeteer's PacketShaper to analyze the applications being used at Layer 7 and map the appropriate services to its firewall ports.

It then closed every unused port. Overnight, the school went from supporting a wide-open network environment to one that is 99.9% locked down at the border - and no one noticed, says John Arsneault, director of network operations at the Boston school.

That and use of McAfee's E Policy Orchestrator let the school eradicate denial-of-service attacks, virus infections and systems vulnerabilities, while reducing virtually all illegal peer-to-peer traffic on the ISP connection. In three years, the school has freed up staff and stabilized ISP costs, resulting in savings of $220,000 a year.

"One unexpected bonus was our obtaining a better understanding of . . . the applications [and tools] different departments . . . depend on. This knowledge helps our relationships . . . and allows us to better serve users in times of need."
- John Arsneault, director of network operations, Harvard Business School