Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Technology Service Provider Reduces Spam Threat with Hosted Filtering Solution
Overview
Country or Region:India
Industry:IT Services
Customer Profile
Cybage, a leading name in the global IT industry, has been consistently adding value to the business bottom line of the very best of the global clientele. Supported by more than3400 professionals, Cybage is a one-stop technology service provider.
Business Situation
Cybage needed a solution to filter unwanted email messages. Besides affecting employee productivity, a large volume of spam was delaying delivery of legitimate messages. Valuable productivetime was lost in managing spam.
Solution
Cybage deployed Microsoft Forefront™ Online Protection for Exchange, which filters out unwanted messages before they reach the company’s system.
Benefits
Reduces spam by 99.5percent
Improves security and end-user productivity
Improves IT administration and productivity
Ensures cost savings / “What do you want in an antispam solution - high rate of spam detection, low rate of false positives, strong security, ease of management, or affordability? Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange has delivered it all for us.”
Viraj Padhye, Head – Information Security & Systems (CISO), Cybage Software Pvt. Ltd.
Cybage, an India-based offshore software services company, offers services ranging fromsoftware development, software maintenance, software re-engineering, quality assurance and testing, technical writing, user interface design, and customer support.With expanding operations, the company experienced a dramatic increase in the amount of unwanted incoming email messages, especially spam in foreign languages. Sifting through spam email messages resulted in lost time and productivity. The company wanted to improve its system of filtering email messages. To address this growing problem,it implemented Microsoft Forefront™ Online Protection for Exchange.Since the implementation, the company has eliminated all instances of foreign language spam messages and reduced the administrative burden of managing and filtering spam. As a result, not only has employee productivity and security increased, but the company is also seeing cost savings of approximately U.S.$150,000 per year.
Situation
Founded in 1995, Cybage is a leading software services company with a proven track record of more than 15 years in the global IT industry. Cybage provides a wide array of high-value software services under a global delivery framework. These services are offered on a broad and comprehensive foundation of its ExcelShore™ model of operational excellence. Cybage’s major strength lies in Outsourced Product Development (OPD) segment. However, what is unique about Cybage is that its strengths can rightly be manifested in their value delivery through encapsulation of operational excellence.
Cybage is in the process of moving up the value chain through a gradual and careful expansion of business practices driven services portfolio. So far, Cybage’s target market by and large has been the software product companies—Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) as they are popularly known. Cybage’s vast client portfolio spans across verticals such as Travel & Hospitality, Media & Entertainment, Manufacturing, Health IT, Retail, Security, e-Commerce, Telecom,and BFSI. Key clients include Microsoft, HSBC, Symantec, Electronic Arts, SAP, Google, and Lexis Nexis, to name a few. Having received an excellent response, Cybage now is poised to offer services to diverse industry verticals—the end users of IT systems.
The technology environment at Cybage is primarily driven by technology from Microsoft. With 3500+ desktops and laptops, the company runs Microsoft operating systems in its data centre to support various business critical functions such asauthentication, security, and mailing.
Email is critical to the company’s operations and is also the primary source of communication for the employees. Cybage reliedon Microsoft Exchange to deliver email services. However, along with email comes spam.For Cybage, spam was a major problem, especially the emails in foreign languages that were not caught by the existing antispam solution—anonline cloud-based antispam filtering solution.Additionally, the antispam was only for incoming mails. Support provided by the online antispam vendor for managing spam and other administrative functions wasinconsistent, and the vendor usually took weeks to provide solutions to issues.With no ticketing system in place to log issues, trackingthese issues was difficult.
Cybage decided to find a different approach to filter unwanted email messages—a solution that would increase productivity, maintain a high standard of service, and reduce risk to business.
Solution
Cybage evaluated options and decided to implement Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, a hosted service that consists of layered technologies to actively help protect businesses’ inbound and outbound email from spam, viruses, phishing scams, and email policy violations.
Viraj Padhye, Head - Information Security and Systems, Cybage says, “We started with a Proof of Concept (POC) to understand how the system works and to find out whether it meetsour requirements.The test proved successful; wefound the service satisfactory in resolving our issues and implemented it.We are satisfied with the filtering solution.”
Forefront Online Protection for Exchange is designed to remove unwanted incoming email messages and other emailthreats before they enter corporate firewalls.
A thorough evaluation was carried out from January 2010 to April 2010. Forefront Online Protection for Exchange was implemented for all Cybage users across all locations in India. Within days into the evaluation,they were able to see its superior effectiveness and ease of administration. Viraj Padhye says “As part of the evaluation process, we had an Implementation Manager assigned to us.This helped in a quick roll-out and provided all the necessary guidance to get the configuration right in addition to getting quick help in the initial troubleshooting of issues. The onboarding experience was a breeze.”
The solution blocks all messages sent from illegitimate senders. It routes all of the company’s incoming and outgoing email messages through Microsoft Global Data Center Network.
Viraj Padhyeexplains, “We no longer have to worry about managing spam, especially foreign language spam. The solution uses three antivirus enginesand multiple antispam filters to manage both incoming and outgoing emails and routes them through multiple filters to block viruses and spam before reaching our network.”
Benefits
Using Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, Cybage has been able to protect its messaging infrastructure against malware and spam to a very large extent. The solution has also enhanced its messaging security. This has improved the reliability of theincoming and outgoing emails.
Reduces Spam by 99.5Percent
With the implementation of Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, the amount of spam has been significantly reduced, making everyone’s job easier. “With the new filtering solution, we are no longer concerned about spam,” says Viraj Padhye. “The solution provides multiple filtering engines and constant protection around the clock,thus giving us a secure email environment. We have reduced the spam on our network by at least 99.5 percent.”
ImprovesSecurity and End-user Productivity
Before implementing Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, administrators used to spend a significant amount of time managing spam. Today, employees spend almost no time managing spam. Every user has an antispam account, so coverage is better becauseall users are protected, irrespective of the amount of spam email each gets. If a user has issues with legitimate mail blocking, those issues are resolved in lesser time.
“Now we don’t have to manage spam on a daily basis;the new solution does all the work for us,” says Viraj Padhye. “With more time at our disposal, we can concentrate on more productive tasks and focus on core business activities.Our employees aremore productive as a result of the new filtering solution.”
Improves IT Administration
The new solution has virtually eliminated the time and effort that the IT staff had to spend administering the earlier solution. Reaching support is no longer a challenge, and the Cybage team does not have to waste productive hours in following up repeatedly for issues faced. The fast and responsive Forefront Online Protection for Exchange comprehensive customer support comes at no additional cost. The service offers comprehensive support for customers, featuring detailed online resources, round-the-clock call centers, and for qualifying accounts, implementation project managers. One of the biggest advantages is the local presence of the Microsoft Relationship Manager who can be reached anytime to help resolve issues.
Viraj Padhyesays, “Since Forefront Online Protection for Exchange was implemented, we have eliminated almost all of our incoming spam. Now we can fully concentrate on daily IT tasks and focus on actual system administration. We were impressed with the ease with which support is accessible and the time they take to look into our issues. For what would take days to resolve with the earlier solution is now easily addressed in a few hours.”
Additionally, the capability to configure delegated administrative access that can be assigned to IT admins and users is a great benefit that helps in easy administration. There is very little administrative overhead in end user management as Forefront provides granular configuration down to individual user account that, once configured, need not be visited repeatedly.A message tracing feature in the solution is a great tool that helps in investigating mail flow issues.
Additionally, the solution offers advanced reporting resources. Using the reporting capabilities in this solution, the Cybage IT staff getsbetter levels of insight into its email flow. It is much easier to get a full view into how much spam a particular employee is receiving, or the number of messages that have been filtered. Overall, it is much simpler to handle issues.
Cost Savings
“By deploying Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, we have avoided both hardware costs and the manpower required to maintain the infrastructure. Additionally, we have reduced the time and money spent on spam management. We are estimating a saving of approximately U.S.$150,000 per year,” comments Viraj Padhye, Head - Information Security and Systems, Cybage Software Pvt. Ltd.
Microsoft Forefront Product Portfolio
The Microsoft Forefront comprehensive line of business security products provides greater protection and control through integration with your existing IT infrastructure and through simplified deployment, management, and analysis. Forefront is a comprehensive solution that helps provide protection for the client operating system, application servers, and the network edge.
For more information about the Forefront product portfolio, go to: