Crédit Coopératif
Places its Trust in Stonesoft Solutions
Crédit
Coopératif, a French cooperative bank founded at the end of the 19th century, employs about 2,000
people in France. Crédit Coopératif provides banking services for numerous individual enterprises
and groups of companies, as well as for cooperatives and their members.
These customers include many public interest organizations and services, in a wide range of sectors (i.e. medical-social, commerce, industry, organizations promoting social integration through economic activity, etc.). Its clientele also includes private parties. It has a network of 70 branch offices located throughout France, in addition to a remote-access branch office for individuals.
The challenge
Crédit Coopératif had already installed network traffic
firewalls, but found itself confronted with outmoded and aging technologies, dating back five or
six years. The solution used by the bank up to this point was beginning to reach its limits in
terms of functionality, administration and performance.
In June 2008, it therefore decided to start looking for a more recent and effective firewall solution in order to protect itself against threats and data leakage via inbound and outbound network traffic.
Deployment
During its search for a new solution, Crédit Coopératif naturally turned to
its IT/networking equipment reseller, the INIFLUX company, which proposed several network security
firms, including Stonesoft.
INIFLUX then began to fulfil its role as a consultant and guide in the search for the right solution. It was at that point that Stonesoft’s FW-5000 appliances caught the attention of the bank´s team, with such features as multi-link functionalities and the Stonesoft centralized administration console (the StoneGate Management Center). INIFLUX installed an operational test model in order to begin the testing stage. The testing was primarily intended to confirm the product’s administration, configuration and functional capabilities.
At the end of this test period, the Stonesoft solution won out, and four appliances (two appliances per data center) were deployed at Crédit Coopératif in an active/active clustering configuration with load balancing between the internal backbone and the outside world, thus ensuring business continuity and protecting against any network downtime due to a potential firewall failure.
Benefits and viewpoints
Crédit Coopératif’s main
criteria for the choice of the Stonesoft solution were ease of administration, its excellent
bandwidth management capabilities, and the product’s packet-handling performance. Philippe Bossut,
Manager of the Networks/Systems and Internet Security department, explains that another goal of the
project was to improve connectivity: the bank’s previous solutions supported connections in
100-Mbit mode, but they now needed to be able to connect in gigabit mode. Stonesoft also met this
requirement of the project specifications document.
Conclusion
At the bank’s Information Systems department, the team was delighted with the
greatly improved performance of the network and the long-term outlook for future throughput
increase. It is now possible for Crédit Coopératif to anticipate its network’s traffic increases.
Bossut also appreciates the capability and options for increasing clustering. As a result, it is
now quick and easy to scale and expand network performance at Crédit Coopératif. The bank already
spends less time managing its network security solution. And it hasn't encountered any problems
since the solution was put into service about five months ago.
For more information about Crédit Coopératif:
www.credit-cooperatif.coop/
About Stonesoft
Stonesoft Corporation (NASDAQ OMX: SFT1V) is an innovative provider of integrated network security solutions to secure the information flow of distributed organizations. Stonesoft customers include enterprises with growing business needs requiring advanced network security and always-on business connectivity.StoneGate™ Secure Connectivity Solution unifies firewall, VPN, IPS and SSL VPN blending network security, end-to-end availability and award-winning load balancing into a centrally managed system. The key benefits of StoneGate Secure Connectivity Solution include low TCO, excellent price-performance ratio and high ROI. The StoneGate Virtual Security Solutions protect the network and ensure business continuity in both virtual and physical network environments.
StoneGate Management Center provides unified management for StoneGate Firewall with VPN, IPS and SSL VPN. StoneGate Firewall and IPS work together to provide intelligent defense throughout the enterprise network while StoneGate SSL VPN provides enhanced security for mobile and remote use.
Founded in 1990, Stonesoft Corporation is a global company with corporate headquarters in Helsinki, Finland and Americas headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, visit www.stonesoft.com and http://stoneblog.stonesoft.com.
