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Lowe Lintas, one of India's premier advertising agencies, with increased demand on their resources and a more complex IT infrastructure was facing challenges fulfilling its promise to deliver secure, timely information to its customers. As a company with limited IT resources and eight major offices and more 10 small offices, Lintas was forced to use a less-than-ideal system for communicating important documents and information between offices.

Lintas has two applications that are widely used in all the offices. One is a customized ERP system using Oracle as the database-all users connect via Citrix to access this application. Apart from this they have the knowledge management developed using SQL Server and a web based interface. The organization runs on a star and spoke network with redundant arms. All the major branches are connected to the head office via 64 kbps leased line, which is being used for both voice and data.

With mission critical files being exchanged between locations and also with clients, the security at all levels needed to be robust and efficient bandwidth made available for the transfers. Explaining the scenario, Commodore Ray D'Souza, director Systems & Technology says, “As there is no dedicated IT staff at all the locations, solution had to be straightforward, easy to implement, and self-managing.”

The agency needed a security solution to improve efficiency. After implementing GajShield, Lintas realized it could secure its multiple offices without hiring additional IT staff or purchasing expensive and proprietary equipment. Ray opined that being from a naval background innovation and cost effectiveness was the only way of life. For example the company wanted to save cost on an e-mail client and looked at innovating with Gajshield product.

Lintas has deployed GajShield Firewall Appliances in various Lowe Lintas's locations such as Lower Parel (Mumbai), Express Tower (Nariman Point-Mumbai) etc. Ray expresses that it was a fast, hassle-free installation as Lintas went live with GajShield services the same day that the services were downloaded onto the company's dedicated PCs. There was immediate secure, seamless communication within hours. Lintas was transmitting files and information securely via the Internet using GajShield to its Mumbai head office and branch offices.

Some of the features that have been implemented by Lowe Lintas are inspection firewall and intrusion prevention system.

The solution also allows a reliable VPN connectivity for traveling users to allow access to their emails. VPN tunnels were established to allow individual users to have easy access to their emails even while they are traveling. The objective was to allow them to have a single mailbox and not having to forward their mails to another email id when they were traveling. The cumbersome part was that users had to manage both the mailboxes, whereas now with the Gajshield implementation of the mailbox, they access their email on the LAN when they are in office and while they are traveling they just connect via VPN and access the web mail. As a result now the user needs to manage only one mailbox. The mail client is also from Gajshield.

Also, using GajShield's managed anti-spam service is protecting Lowe Lintas' email traffic from spams. They had selected this particular service option so that spams could be stopped at the source itself. So there is a decrease in the bandwidth consumption as the spam mails are stopped and restricted at GajShield's Internet server.

Without making a substantial investment or having dedicated IT staff at each location, Lintas has been able to create a secured environment for its entire business. This is directly impacting the efficiency of the agency where time to market and deliver is minimum.

Minu Sirsalewala
minuvs@cybermedia.co.in