Network Associates, a provider of intrusion prevention solutions, in conjunction with reseller Dynamic Recovery Services (DRS), has announced a contract to standardise all desktops within Standard Bank of South Africa with McAfee Active Virus Defense. The organisation now features 24 000 seats of the McAfee anti-virus software, making it one of the largest deployments for Network Associates in SA.
This move builds on Standard Bank`s confidence in McAfee anti-virus and firewall software, as the financial institution also recently deployed McAfee VirusScan ASaP and McAfee Desktop Firewall ASaP online services to protect its customers against hackers, viruses and other malicious threats.
Standard Bank previously ran multiple vendor anti-virus software products on its desktops and was motivated to standardise when the benefit of a single vendor product became apparent: ease of control through Network Associates central management console, McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO). The management console also ensures that the latest version of McAfee anti-virus software resides on every laptop and PC in the company.
Through DRS, Standard Bank has committed to a five-year maintenance contract that will stabilise ongoing costs. The standardisation also means that DRS will be the primary point of contact for support, which eliminates the problems associated with dealing with multiple vendors and resellers.
Says Louis Lehmann, IT security director at Standard Bank: "There were a couple of factors that influenced our decision to go with the McAfee anti-virus solution. Technically the software excelled in respect to performance and didn`t require a large amount of memory to execute. Ease of deployment was also a consideration and updates are performed incrementally, ensuring that our users and network are not affected adversely by large downloads.
"The nature of our business is trust in the integrity and robustness of our IT systems and we cannot afford for a malicious threat to render the network useless," continued Lehmann. "High availability of our IT infrastructure is key to the bank`s business and a public incident could impact us negatively. With McAfee Active Virus Defense, we can be assured that we have the most proactive protection available against malicious threats, allowing us to focus on what is most important-our customers."
Standard Bank makes use of laptops, which can allow viruses to infiltrate the network through access to the Internet from another site. McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator ensures that the latest release of its McAfee anti-virus software is installed on the laptop and the signature file is updated when accessing Standard Bank`s network. This substantially reduces the risk to the user and organisations, ensuring no loopholes exist.
Christopher Bray, regional director of sub-Saharan Africa for Network Associates, says: "Network Associates is pleased that Standard Bank has selected McAfee award-winning system protection solutions as its technology of choice for protecting both its business and customers from malicious threats. Their decision to standardise on McAfee technology highlights our continued success in the corporate market, especially banking institutions, and helps testify to the fact that McAfee anti-virus and firewall technology offers the most advanced protection available."
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