Étude de cas - Régis Martelet

Founded over 150 years ago, Régis Martelet is a family haulage firm with 300 registered vehicles and approximately 250 employees. The business covers a wide range of activities, including global transport and logistics solutions, international transport and batch transport, messenger and express services, and the rental of vehicles with driver.

Challenge

After a complete overhaul of their IT infrastructure and the implementation of a new VMWare architecture, David Cannelle – Head of IT at Régis Martelet – decided to update the company’s legacy network security solution, which no longer complied with data protection regulations. On the recommendation of their IT provider, Regis Martelet looked to WatchGuard. “An increasing number of requirements could no longer be met by our previous solution,” explained David Cannelle. “We wanted to improve connection log management with a high performance search tool, and to obtain more details through the filtered elements. At the same time, we were seeking full integration with our Active Directory base which lets us establish filtering rules per user. We were also looking for a solution that could offer genuine protection against new threats and was able to generate detailed, intuitive reports. We also needed high availability, as is the case for the rest of our IT infrastructure. A WatchGuard representative explained all the possibilities available with their technology and it turned out it was a perfect match for our requirements!”

Solution

The WatchGuard infrastructure was deployed at the company’s headquarters in March 2016, comprised of two Firebox M400 devices configured as an active-passive cluster and connected via a fibre optic link. Each device has its own Internet connection, enabling automatic switchover, should a fault with one of the links or devices occur.

The Fireboxes are bolstered with antivirus protection, as well as Intrusion Prevention, Application Control, spamBlocker, WebBlocker and APT Blocker subscriptions to provide additional layers of defense. The system is completed by Dimension – WatchGuard’s cloud-based logging and reporting system – and the addition of VPN SSL access, which provides a secure tunnel for users who need to log on to the company network from a remote location.

Results

Régis Martelet have been thrilled with the WatchGuard solution every step of the way, starting with the straightforward install. “During installation, the Internet was only off for five minutes, with no impact for users,” David pointed out. The cluster configuration ensures high availability with automatic switchover in the event of a failure and also means that the devices can be updated in a totally transparent manner with no need to switch the system off.

The new solution gives IT staff greater visibility over connection logs and optimizes access management. Full integration with Active Directory enables David and his team to manage individual user rights. “A lot of our workstations are used by several different people, so we eventually lost track of who had access to what,” David reflected. In addition, the WatchGuard devices provide advanced protection against new types of threats such as APT, a feature that the staff were able to utilize just a few minutes after installation, identifying and neutralizing a cryptolocker attack.

Dimension generates daily reports that describe all detected attacks, unauthorized access attempts, and so on. “Dimension soon proved its worth by identifying a workstation affected by a botnet that was polluting network traffic,” David noted. This visibility over events occurring on the network lets Régis Martelet staff identify and take immediate action to correct incidents, mitigate threats, and maintain the security of the network.