CHICAGO BRIDGE & IRON, CHICAGO IL

Chicago Bridge & Iron is a global engineering and construction company with a worldwide presence. Reliance on email for internal and external communication is a given. Attendant problems are also a given ¾ files too large for efficient email transmission, harmful attachments, and inappropriate content. Without MAILsweeper spot-checking and intercepting inappropriate email traffic was an inexhaustible and impossible task. The inability to filter cost the company between $20,000 and $30,000 monthly as billing was by volume; as volume rose, costs rose as well. Two years ago, CB&I installed MAILsweeper from Content Technologies on a new gateway and radically reduced costs. CB&I's success with MAILsweeper led the company to serve as a beta site for a new product from Content Technologies' MIMEsweeper family, PORNsweeper. Pleased with the results of the beta program, CB&I quickly took steps to implement PORNsweeper as part of their corporate e-mail security policy.

"Using MAILsweeper and PORNsweeper together protects us from malicious email, controls volume on our network, filters junk and non-business communications, and gives us legal and security protection. We couldn't ask for much more in a content security solution." Kelly Housman, Technical Analyst

A Century Old and Worldwide

Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. is one of the world's leading engineering and construction companies, serving customers in the petroleum, petrochemical, chemical, utility, pulp and paper, water services, and metals and mining industries. For more than 100 years, the company has been supplying a comprehensive range of steel plate structures and associated systems that help its customers store and process the earth's natural resources. The company enjoys the distinction of a safety record that is ten times better than the U.S. national average for its industry.

Working Across Borders

Chicago Bridge & Iron has the capability to safely execute work in every industrialized country and in the world's most challenging and remote locations. CB&I's 6,000 employees work out of 33 offices in a global network that spans Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East, and the United States.

The technical environment at CB&I is an architecture of multiple WANs and LANs, Microsoft Windows NT servers, and a TCP/IP protocol. The company uses Lotus Notes for email and MAILsweeper for SMTP for all Internet messages. There are currently about 2,000 email users globally. The user population will soon exceed 3,000.

Information Technology at CB&I consists of a support center, development resources, infrastructure services, and a group that expedites email on an international basis. Technical analyst Kelly Housman has been providing international support on Internet issues and security since 1998.

Moving to MAILsweeper

When Kelly Housman arrived at CB&I the company was migrating to Lotus Notes for its email functions. Eager to reduce an e-mail support expense of over $20,000 per month, CB&I looked to MAILsweeper from Content Technologies. The product was installed on a new gateway in a service network zone (DMZ) where it filters all Internet mail to or from anywhere in the world. Significant cost savings were achieved when CB&I began to rely on MAILsweeper to reduce the volume of email and thus keep WAN lines open for mission-critical applications.

MAILsweeper helped CB&I resolve a number of issues. With a network as expansive as CB&I's, bandwidth utilization is a major concern. Kelly gives the example of a field location in Singapore that transmits over a "slow pipe," a 16K frame relay. So CB&I uses MAILsweeper to limit the file size of email attachments. The strength of MAILsweeper as a content filtering device means that CB&I can screen email for dangerous file types and dubious content. CB&I quarantines all files with executable code, and all video files for review of size and content, and screens out .bmp files larger than 300 K. MAILsweeper gives them excellent control; for example, they've created exceptions to the executable rule so that software patches and updates from or to the IT support group are classed as allowable traffic. MAILsweeper also helps with administration as it informs both the sender and recipient that a message has been stopped with an explanation, and instructs them on how to retrieve the message if necessary.

Kelly says, "MAILsweeper is a great product. We never have to worry about mutant versions of a virus. When Melissa hit, MIMEsweeper informed us how to protect against it, and we avoided a major disaster."

The content of email messages is screened for SPAM and junk mail. For example, Kelly tags email that contains words such as "make money fast" and "guaranteed."

Adding to the Security Solution

A new product from Content Technologies' MIMEsweeper family lets companies scrutinize email content further and conserve precious bandwidth. PORNsweeper is an add-on module for MAILsweeper that works at the e-mail gateway to provide policy-based content security and image analysis. It scans images attached to, or embedded in, emails for inappropriate content, such as nudity, pornography, cartoons, and other related material adhering to the content security policy that the company sets. PORNsweeper protects organizations from legal liability and keeps network bandwidth available for legitimate business use.

A Committed Customer

CB&I is adding PORNsweeper to its family of content security solutions from Content Technologies. They plan to formalize company policies to use the product as effectively as possible. And they will continue to use MAILsweeper to keep down the cost of worldwide traffic on its ever-expanding network. All in all, Content Technologies provides the ideal content security solution for Chicago Bridge & Iron.