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ACTIVE FOLDERS AT INTERMEC |
With more than 3500 employees in 60 offices around the world and 256kb links between countries, Intermec have implemented a complex e-mail infrastructure using Microsoft Exchange. To support this set-up and to protect business applications such as volume e-mail fax and integration to Baan from e-mail-borne virus attacks, Intermec have needed to implement a multiple layered defense system to ensure down time is kept to a minimum.
Intermec first discovered C2C's Active Folders through a web search
following the outbreak of the 'Melissa' virus. Like some of the world's
biggest and most computer-savvy companies, including Microsoft® and
Intel, Intermec were forced to close their links to the world to prevent
the spread of infection.
Once it had hit, the virus took their system down for 6 hours and affected
50 percent of the corporate organization. Intermec used Active Folders to
scan their Exchange message store for messages that had passed the
front-line defenses and were within the internal system. Once found,
Active Folders could delete these items.
As an astute company, relying on technology to process their business efficiently, Intermec can measure the financial consequences of not trading and delayed trading, and estimated this in the region of thousands of dollars per hour. As the new anti-virus definition files took most of the day to arrive, the cost of a product that keeps their system running could easily be justified.
"Our primary need was to search and delete items in our message store while waiting for the full Anti-Virus solution and Active Folders could do this. We needed to have a Layered Defense in place to ensure that any items slipping past our gateway were caught quickly elsewhere", says Malcolm Marwick, European Network Supervisor.
During this time, it became apparent that Active Folders would play
another important role in Intermec's corporate e-policy. This
justification was a rogue e-mail sent by a former employee, making
unacceptable statements about some senior managers.
"This was very damaging to the parties concerned and when we discovered that Active Folders could also scan for content on specific issues, we were eager to install as soon as possible to prevent this from happening again", says Marwick.
Active Folders was implemented quickly and smoothly and has since dealt
with Melissa hangovers, I Love You and Anna Kournikova viruses and
provided protection against rogue emails. Intermec does not operate a
policy of scanning all e-mail, but like many companies, will scan
mailboxes and folders for certain material on the request of a senior
manager.
Active Folders has now been successfully implemented over the 14 offices
in Europe, including the Headquarters for Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA)
and Asia-Pacific, located in the UK. "The implementation has been a
great success, and we no longer need to shut the system down for anything
more than a few minutes when a new e-mail borne virus attack hits. The
effect of this on business is obviously huge and easily justifies the cost
of implementing Active Folders" says Marwick.
The Exchange System
Intermec's Exchange system was originally built in 3 weeks, after their
cc:Mail system crashed and was unrecoverable. Having built in haste, they
are planning to consolidate and improve the system set-up. In recent
months they have moved from an NT/Exchange 5.5 base to Windows 2000 and
over the next 12 months they will upgrade to Exchange 2000.
Intermec's folder system has grown rapidly to more than 3500 folders. They
are looking for Active Folders to move them from a reactive situation with
the management of Exchange to a pro-active one. They see the benefit of
Active Folder's trend analysis and usage reporting and how this will give
them more accurate information on the growth of the their folder and
mailbox system.
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