Brown McCarroll
StoneGate NextGen Firewall Reconnects Brown McCarroll to a Higher Standard of Performance
Brown
McCarroll, a successful law firm based in Texas, has always maintained a laser focus on how to keep
their operations efficient and productive. With 230 employees and four offices spread across the
state – Austin, Houston, Dallas and El Paso – Brown McCarroll has turned to technologies like VoIP
and videoconferencing to cut travel costs, improve productivity and strengthen inter-office
communications.
However, in 2009, the firm encountered a major roadblock. Despite their intent to use technology advancements to streamline communications, their existing network security infrastructure was unable to support their operations. Brown McCarroll had been a long time Check Point customer, using a total of four Check Point firewall/VPNs to secure their network perimeter and establish site-to-site VPN connections.
Over the
years, the Check Point firewall/VPNs had become a burden on Brown McCarroll’s small IT department.
The devices were routinely taking down the network, which hindered the firm’s productivity. This
was especially true for the firm’s partners, who had made specific investments in inter-office
communication technology to improve operations and reduce costs – as well as expedite the handling
of timely and sensitive business matters.
Unfortunately, the reality was that the network was costing Brown McCarroll thousands of dollars in productivity every hour it was down. Even when the firewalls were up and running, the IT department spent countless hours creating complicated work arounds. To add insult to injury, Check Point’s customer support performance was subpar – making firewall/VPN maintenance and configuration that much more difficult and resource-intensive for the law firm.
The issue became clear. If the firm wanted to truly leverage advancements in communication technology to improve business productivity, they had to start with a more reliable firewall/VPN infrastructure.
A History of Performance Makes the Case for StoneGate
Brown McCarroll’s search for the right firewall/VPN vendor didn’t take very long. Through prior experience in the industry, the firm’s IT team was familiar with Stonesoft’s StoneBeat™ high availability technology to improve the performance of their Check Point devices. Since then, Stonesoft has built an entire portfolio of network security solutions that have been engineered from the ground up for high availability and centralized management, including the StoneGate NextGen Firewall, which includes unified threat management (UTM) features like antivirus, web filtering and intrusion prevention system (IPS) capabilities.
“I remembered how effective the StoneBeat technology had been from my earlier days in IT. I knew that any firewall product driven by that kind of quality would be what our firm needed to finally resolve our site-to-site connectivity issue.”
Howard Hyten, Director of IT, Brown McCarroll
It wasn’t just the performance of StoneGate that attracted Brown McCarroll. The cost and support benefits were also significant when compared to the headache they had experienced with their previous vendor. The StoneGate NextGen Firewall featured built-in active/active clustering with every appliance. This would eliminate any firewall device or Internet connection as a single point of failure and automatically route traffic to another node on the cluster in the case of a problem. Check Point, in comparison, charged extra – significantly more – for this functionality.
Additionally, Brown McCarroll would be able to eliminate costly subscriptions from Check Point as they would have access to StoneGate’s built-in UTM features, to be provided at no additional cost. Immediately, Brown McCarroll would receive proactive intrusion prevention, alerts and visibility into malicious activity on the firms network. Furthermore, the reports and information provided by StoneGate’s reporting capabilities would easily justify and validate the firm’s security investments to the firm’s partners.
The StoneGate Management Center, which is included with the StoneGate NextGen Firewall, would drastically simplify device configuration and management. Plus Stonesoft’s impeccable customer support record gave Brown McCarroll reassurance that would be getting the level of support their organization needed.
The Price Tag for Reliability? One-third Less.
Through Perket Technologies, a Stonesoft partner and managed security
services provider (MSSP), Brown McCarroll replaced its firewall/VPN infrastructure with five
StoneGate NextGen Firewall devices – one cluster at the main office in Austin, and four other
devices at the firm’s smaller locations. Almost immediately, Brown McCarroll was able to get rid of
the external IP addresses and static NATs assigned to each phone (a costly workaround created by
the firm’s IT department to enable VoIP).
The installation of the StoneGate NextGen Firewall devices was a quick process. In less than a weekend, the network was up and running and the firm’s partners were finally able to engage in reliable videoconferencing communication. The network hasn’t gone down once since the StoneGate implementation, even during the testing of active/active firewall clusters.
Additionally, Brown McCarroll has been able to eliminate costly subscriptions from Check Point as they received immediate access to the StoneGate NextGen Firewall’s built-in UTM features, which were provided at no additional cost. From day one, Brown McCarroll received proactive intrusion prevention, alerts and visibility into malicious activity on the firms network. The reporting capabilities of the StoneGate Management Center provided powerful justification and validation of their investment in Stonesoft. In just three months, the appliances had generated more than 1,200 alerts of suspicious network activity – ranging from web attacks to blocking internal access to chat programs – while fully protecting Brown McCarroll’s network from harmful threats.
Device management has also been highly simplified. Through the StoneGate Management Center, Brown McCarroll is able to quickly configure and troubleshoot firewall issues from a single console. StoneGate’s “create once, deploy everywhere” rules capabilities has made device updates a snap.
The StoneGate NextGen Firewall has made life significantly easier for Brown McCarroll’s IT team. Because the firewalls can be quickly and easily managed and administered from a single console, the firm no longer has to send IT resources out onsite to manage each device.
“Our partners use videoconferencing to cut travel costs and maximize productivity. In the past, you never knew if it was going to work or not, which was stressful for everyone. I can’t say enough about StoneGate’s reliability and performance. You can’t put a price tag on it, yet we’r e still paying one-third less than we did with our previous vendor.”
Howard Hyten, Director of IT, Brown McCarroll
Reliability and Performance Boosts Productivity for Firm’s Greatest Assets
While it’s hard to precisely quantify the impact that the StoneGate
NextGen Firewall has had, the cost savings are clear. Today, the firm spends nearly one-third
the cost of their previous firewall solution, while realizing major improvements in performance and
reliability. The built-in high availability technologies included in each StoneGate NextGen
Firewall device would have cost the firm tens of thousands of dollars more had they gone with
another vendor.
In addition, Brown McCarroll’s investment in the StoneGate NextGen Firewall has helped the firm cut extraneous costs from their network. For example, they no longer have to pay for static NATs/IP addresses for each phone used for VoIP. In addition, now that they’re using multiple ISPs at certain locations, StoneGate’s Multi-Link™ technology is able to manage, inspect, route and load-balance traffic over both ISPs while ensuring the network never goes down.
However, the greatest benefit has been the firm’s ability to finally take advantage of reliable VoIP and videoconferencing capabilities. The partners have been able to conduct business at the highest level of efficiency, ensuring the firm’s most valued assets are productive – not waiting for the firewall to be fixed.
About Brown McCarroll
For more than 60 years, Brown McCarroll has been a leader in the Texas legal community and beyond. With clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to individuals, Brown McCarroll has established a strong regional and national presence by consistently delivering effective solutions to its clients. The firm has grown to include offices in key judicial, legislative and business regions in the state of Texas –Austin, Dallas, Houston and El Paso – handling litigation, business, estate planning and environmental matters.
For more information, visit www.brownmccarroll.com.
Brown McCarroll Challenges
- Poor firewall performance and site-to-site connectivity
- Inability to reliably utilize VoIP and videoconferencing, which are crucial to business productivity
- Forced to pay extra costs to support VoIP
- Subpar customer support from previous firewall/VPN vendor
- Device management cumbersome, requiring on-site personnel to complete
- Lack of visibility into network made it difficult to justify security value to firm
- High TCO for capital and operational costs because of complex “bolt-on” licensing
Results with Stonesoft
- Implemented five StoneGate NextGen Firewall clusters
- VoIP and videoconferencing up and running without any downtime
- Reduced annual firewall and support costs by nearly 35 percent
- Reduced need for onsite firewall support with StoneGate Management Center
- Proactive protection and visibility into network that justified security
- Reduced overall network TCO by almost 40 percent
About Stonesoft
Stonesoft Corporation (NASDAQ OMX: SFT1V) delivers proven, innovative solutions that simplify network security management for even the most complex network environments. The StoneGate Platform unifies management of entire networks - including StoneGate and third-party devices – blending integrated threat management, end-to-end high availability and network optimization into a centrally controlled system. As a result, Stonesoft provides the highest levels of proactive control, always-on connectivity and compliance at the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) on the market today. Founded in 1990, the company is an established leader in network security innovation with corporate headquarters in Helsinki, Finland and Americas headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, visit www.stonesoft.com and http://stoneblog.stonesoft.com.
