Symetrix implements Cisco's PIX 515E for PPS Insurance

Symetrix Information Technologies, a leading provider of high IT availability solutions for medium to large corporations, has recently replaced the legacy Checkpoint Firewall security system for the Professional Provident Society Insurance Company Limited (PPS Insurance) to Cisco's PIX 515 Firewall. This implementation was prompted by PPS Insurance's need for an improved security system for its latest virtual private network (VPN) infrastructure.

"We needed a holistic security offering that encompassed the latest technology," says Jonathan Boucher, IT relations manager at PPS Insurance. "Based on a three year association with Symetrix, their professionalism and service as well as Cisco's reputation, it was a natural decision to go with Symetrix."

The Cisco PIX 515E is a purpose-built security application that delivers unprecedented levels of security, performance and reliability. These platforms provide robust, enterprise-class security services including stateful inspection firewalling, standards-based IPsec VPN, intrusion protection in cost-effective and easy to deploy solutions.

"The planning and implementation of this project took us less than a month and the project was so well organised that no down time was experienced," says Ben Swartz, managing director of Symetrix. "The actual implementation took place over a weekend to ensure that PPS's productivity was not affected.

"PIX 515E offers an unprecedented level of security protection for corporates like PPS Insurance which may be vulnerable to attacks due to the fact that they connect to a number of other companies."

With PIX 515E Firewalls, access is permitted only if an appropriate connection exists to validate passage. This gives PPS Insurance transparent access for internal and authorised external users, while protecting internal networks from unauthorised access.

The high availability of the system is supported by the deployment of a redundant standby unit. This option maintains concurrent connections through an automatic synchronisation ensuring that sessions are maintained and transition is completely transparent to network users even in the event of a system failure.

"PPS Insurance will greatly benefit from the PIX implementation, bearing in mind that the growth of the Internet has resulted in increased security risks to corporate, government and private networks," says Swartz. "PPS Insurance's previous checkpoint firewall, like many other existing solutions, had many limitations, including slow performance, the need for costly general-purpose platforms and the security risks inherent in using an open system. A Cisco PIX 515E firewall implementation will eliminate all these vulnerabilities."

"We are very pleased with this implementation, not only because it proved to be very cost-effective, but most importantly, now we can go through our day-to-day running of the business without the fear of our system being infiltrated," concludes Boucher.