Blue Coat Spyware Prevention

AAA North Jersey accelerates fight against spyware with Blue Coat Spyware InterceptorTM appliance Member Association Deploys Network Gateway Solution to Protect Against Spyware
As North America's largest motoring and leisure travel organization, the AAA/CAA Association provides its members with travel, insurance, financial and automotive related services through clubs located in each state. AAA North Jersey serves its members from four offices in New Jersey's Bergen, Hudson and Passaic counties. In 2000, AAA North Jersey began migrating most of its approximately 120 PCs to the Windows 2000 operating system. Bob Santee, I/S manager and network administrator for AAA North Jersey, indicated that until that point, spyware had never really been much of a problem. “Our migration to Windows 2000 probably coincided with the full-scale emergence of spyware,” said Santee. “So we began seeing a significant increase in the number of pop-up ads, automatic downloads and other spyware, and soon realized that our systems and certain user activity were placing us at risk of infection.” Although all of the organization's PCs were connected to the network and had Internet access, Santee and his team (comprised of one assistant and two data entry personnel) found that much of the spyware problem was originating within the travel and auto routing departments, whose employees often rely on the Internet to do their jobs. In addition, other managers who used the Internet a significant amount during the day seemed to be having trouble with spyware. “We tried to educate users about Web sites to avoid, or why they shouldn't click on advertisements, but there is only so much we could do. Eventually it became clear that we needed a more aggressive approach to what was an emerging problem.” With more than 10 percent of PCs infected with spyware, Santee and his team first began tweaking Internet Explorer on each machine to increase security-protection policies. Then they began a PC-by-PC cleanup, using a combination of a free spyware cleaner and one purchased application. However, because the machines remained clean only until their next visit to spyware-laden sites, Santee realized that a multilayered approach was necessary. “As I was renewing our anti-virus software license, my value-added reseller (VAR) representative mentioned an anti spyware appliance from Blue Coat Systems that blocked spyware at the network gateway. I figured that if it even stopped 50 percent of the spyware, it would be well worth the cost.”

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AAA North Jersey Throttles Spyware While Accelerating Other Mission-Critical Activities
When he received the Spyware Interceptor appliance in August 2005, Santee was immediately impressed with how simple and straightforward the Blue Coat spyware prevention appliance was to install. “We have a fixed firewall in place and have to be compliant with certain standards set by AAA National, but the appliance affected none of this, as it installed in a matter of minutes. After installation and some initial tweaks to block and unblock certain sites, the appliance has virtually run itself and requires little administration other than reading the log reports.” These log reports have demonstrated that Spyware Interceptor is doing its job. Santee believes that Blue Coat Spyware appliances block at least 95 percent of potential spyware, as a result eliminating the “phone home” activity that would normally occur after infection. “Our experience has been that it has stopped almost all the spyware attacking our systems, so it has definitely paid for itself since installation.” In addition, Santee estimates that Spyware Interceptor has reduced 80 percent of the amount of time previously devoted to cleaning and rescuing machines brought to a halt by spyware, enabling his team to spend more time on activities that enhance the business. “There is always so much we could be doing in terms of providing new services to our employees, so the less time I have to spend on ‘rescue operations,' the more I can spend on projects that actually add value to the business.” Finally, Santee believes that leveraging a multilayered approach can be a good example for AAA clubs in other states. “Desktop cleaners alone are not enough—we need a multilayered approach because the threats have become so sophisticated. While I have met minimum standards previously, I believe that Spyware Interceptor now enables me to achieve ‘best practice' protection that could benefit the entire AAA/CAA Association.”

Annie E. Casey Foundation Deploys Blue Coat Spyware InterceptorTM Appliance to Protect Large Amounts of Data Organization
Since 1948, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has worked to build a better future for vulnerable children and their families in the United States. The primary mission of the foundation, based in Baltimore, Maryland, is to foster public policy and human service reforms, as well as provide community support that more effectively meets the needs of today's disadvantaged families. With more than 240 PC systems being used by the foundation's 175-person grant staff in two different buildings, protecting large amounts of data and information presented a formidable challenge for network administrator Dennis Wolfinger and the foundation's six-member IT team. Specifically, they viewed spyware as an emerging problem. “We read quite a bit about spyware over the last six months, and decided that we needed to be more proactive about protecting our systems,” said Wolfinger. “More of our employees were having problems with ‘slow' computers and we were concerned that spyware would continue to spread across our network. If I had to guess, at least five to 10 percent of our help desk calls were as a result of significant spyware infiltration.” The foundation's IT team had not implemented any specific anti-spyware measures, but had investigated a few desktop software solutions. However, the continuing need to re-image PCs made it clear a broader solution was necessary. “We looked at some client software solutions, but felt that we really needed something else. That's when we turned to Blue Coat and its Spyware Interceptor appliance.” Blue Coat Solution Lives Up to Its Promises Henry Dennig, information and communications technologies director at the foundation, read about the Spyware Interceptor appliance and felt that it was just what his IT team needed to begin tackling the foundation's spyware problem. “Henry read several articles that compared favorably the Spyware Interceptor appliance to other products, and then he saw it demonstrated at the Networld + Interop show, so we decided to give it a try,” said Wolfinger. In August 2005, the foundation installed Blue Coat's Spyware Interceptor, largely because the IT team was able to try the appliance prior to purchase. “We read some good reports, but the ‘try before you buy' program helped us validate those reports.”

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