Case Study   centron (Germany)   German-Based Web Solutions Provider Blocks Over 1 Million Attacks Monthly Using TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention System Organization: centron Location: Bamberg, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Germany Employees: 20 Market Segment: Internet Services and Managed Web Solutions Provider Applications: All Internet services, including managed web hosting and development 3Com / Tipping Point Systems: TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) The Challenge In today's world of cyber threats, small start-ups and large enterprises alike must protect their networks and server farms from the ever-increasing threat of computer-generated attacks. No one understands this critical security challenge better than centron (http://www.centron.de/de/index.html), a highly successful German web hosting firm, based in Bamberg, Germany, serving over 2,000 customers worldwide. Using 60-Gigabit connections and six major carriers, including Deutsche Telekom, Colt and Level 3 at Frankfurt and Nuremberg data centers, centron must provide secure Internet access and web hosting services to a broad spectrum of clients, such as sports apparel designer Jack Wolfskin, European coffee magnate Idee Kaffee, and the U.S. Army. To lessen the risk from Internet-based attacks to its systems, centron introduced a number of security solutions, like firewall protection, vulnerability assessments, and spam prevention. However, centron wanted to move beyond traditional security solutions to preemptively protect its networks and those of its customers from increasingly lethal worms, Denial of Service (DoS) floods, spyware, buffer overflows and viruses, plus a host of other potentially devastating attacks. Centron recognized that there were potential vulnerabilities in its existing security system and also realized the competitive advantages of addressing them proactively. "Firewalls are relatively static and inflexible," confirmed Wilhelm Seucan, head of product management, centron. "Whenever new attacks from the Internet appear, as they inevitably do by the thousands. As soon as Microsoft or Linux announce a vulnerability, our technicians had to react quickly to manually update our firewalls. This was a time-consuming and costly process that diverted valuable human resources to routine, but critical, management and also caused inconvenient downtime for our customers, since service had to be interrupted during updates." Why Solutions from TippingPoint, a division of 3Com Centron sought an advanced, sophisticated intrusion prevention system (IPS) to proactively secure its vast infrastructure against present and future exploits. The solution needed to be powerful enough to handle traffic traveling on its 60- Gigabit connections without in any way compromising network performance. It needed to be easily manageable and provide robust reporting capabilities to allow centron to update customers on their security status. Together with its security specialist, Omicron (http://omicron.ch), centron carefully evaluated intrusion prevention systems from a number of leading vendors. The only solution that met its high standards was the multiple award-winning TippingPoint IPS. Pervasive Security With the TippingPoint security solution, "centron achieves a previously unattainable level of pervasive security," said Daniel Götz, CTO, centron. "The TippingPoint IPS defends against attacks before they reach our server network. Hacker attacks, worms, and DoS assaults are eliminated in real time before they even arrive at our firewall without compromising the availability and performance of our services. The TippingPoint IPS thus protects our infrastructure from thousands of attempted attacks per day and over a million threats each month." To ensure that protection is pervasive and preemptive against new and emerging threats, centron relies on the TippingPoint Digital Vaccine® real-time inoculation service, which provides regularly updated filters to deliver comprehensive Application Protection, Performance Protection, and Infrastructure Protection across its network. Offering total packet protection at Gigabit speeds, TippingPoint Application Protection capabilities give centron fast, accurate, reliable protection from internal and external cyber attacks. Performance Protection features allow centron to throttle non-mission critical applications that hijack valuable bandwidth and IT resources, thereby enhancing network efficiencies. Infrastructure Protection protects centron's routers, switches, DNS, and other vital infrastructure from targeted attacks and network anomalies. Moreover, the Digital Vaccine service is administered automatically with no intervention required by IT personnel, freeing IT staff to concentrate on business, rather than maintenance, related issues. And since the TippingPoint IPS protects centron in advance of attack, the company can schedule Microsoft and Linux updates at a time that causes the least disruption, usually at night, for its customers. The TippingPoint IPS' also lets centron provide each of its customers with customized reports that document the pervasive protection the IPS delivers. Comprehensive reporting provides information on all security-related events. Benefits Summary "The TippingPoint IPS gives us a huge competitive edge," affirmed Seucan. "It has enhanced security, availability, and performance. Not only are we better able to serve our clients' needs, the TippingPoint IPS is an important factor in attracting new clientele. When you can demonstrate with a clear report that you are protecting clients' servers from thousands of threats each day, that inspires enormous customer confidence right off the bat." "In terms of time saved on updates, improved productivity, and service to our clients, the return on our initial TippingPoint investment was almost immediate," said Seucan. Having successfully piloted the TippingPoint IPS on a single installation, centron plans to deploy a TippingPoint IPS for each of its bank of servers. "We were so impressed by the results we achieved with the TippingPoint IPS that we want to leverage its capabilities to open a whole new business-driver for us. By partnering with TippingPoint, we can offer globally to all our customers the value-added assurance of the ultimate in secure networking. We are confident that the TippingPoint IPS will be a central factor in securing not only our networks, but also our future growth." 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