AST completes British American Tobacco contract

AST ESM, a business unit of the AST Group, has provided British American Tobacco South Africa (Pty) Ltd with a comprehensive security and risk management solution, comprising Symantec`s Enterprise Security Management, Intruder Alert and NetRecon applications, to the value of just under R2.8 million.

British American Tobacco South Africa needed to address its potential exposure to illegal and unauthorised access to its data and its network, in addition to assessing, monitoring and managing the risks in its computing environment on an ongoing basis. Having investigated the products offered by all the major suppliers of security solutions, British American Tobacco South Africa decided on the Symantec technology as its strategic de facto standard.

"We turned to AST ESM because of their strong relationship with Symantec. They come highly recommended, and have provided us with excellent service and advice," says Johann van Duyn, British American Tobacco South Africa`s IT Risk and Security manager.

Gerhard van Rensburg, General Manager of AST ESM Cape Town, says: "Today`s networked business world brings with it a number of risks. In order to secure a networked environment, we first need to analyse the environment and the client`s business requirements - we need to know what to secure, before we decide how we are going to secure it. AST`s understanding of the manufacturing environment and processes and our partnership with Symantec in SA allowed us to provide British American Tobacco South Africa with these high specification security products."

The Symantec Enterprise Security Manager application automates the planning, management and control of British American Tobacco South Africa`s security policy from a single location, by automating the repetitive and redundant tasks associated with managing such a policy. Symantec Enterprise Security Manager provides an efficient means of managing and controlling the policy and generating reports that provide tangible evidence of progress across the enterprise.

Symantec Intruder Alert (ITA) detects unauthorised and malicious activity, keeping systems, applications and data secure from misuse and abuse. If these systems are threatened, the system can notify British American Tobacco South Africa and even take precautionary actions to prevent information theft or loss. While Intruder Alert permits the creation and deployment of new policies, it also actively maintains the availability and integrity of systems and data.

Symantec NetRecon exposes vulnerabilities in an organisation`s network before intruders can exploit them and attack. The application automatically scans systems and services on the network and safely simulates common intrusion or attack scenarios. It goes beyond just discovering security vulnerabilities, providing a systematic understanding of their causes by utilising a unique root-cause and path-analysis engine to illustrate the exact sequence of steps taken to uncover vulnerabilities, enabling administrators to identify exactly where to correct vulnerabilities in order to enforce corporate security policies.