Case Study - ASAM

Challenge

Established since 1995, and now with over 80 offices in over 40 provinces, the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM) is a non-profit aimed at providing social and legal support to refugees and asylum seekers who live in Turkey. Equally important, ASAM provides psycho-social support, while organizing various courses and activities to help them adapt to society.

Because ASAM has many branch offices, they needed a solution that seamlessly connected them all while being both secure and scalable. ASAM was previously using Cyberoam, a Sophos company, which did not allow them to have a reliable VPN connection and could not handle their large traffic volume. “We had consistent problems with our network with frequent disconnections. It came to the point where it became difficult to manage our branch offices,” recalled Onur Ogretmen, Senior IT Officer, ASAM. For this reason, the association looked for a new security solution that met their organization’s needs and had readily available technical support. After evaluating Fortinet and WatchGuard, ASAM chose WatchGuard because of the easy-to-use security solution and technical support that could grow with their organization.

Solution

To ensure the HQ and other remote offices remain connected and secure, ASAM opted to deploy WatchGuard Firebox T30, T35, M300 and M470. Day to day, the association leverages many of their security services, including WatchGuard’s Application Control and WebBlocker, as well as their robust VPN solution. Together, these services help ASAM achieve a connection with branch offices without sacrificing performance. On top of that, ASAM appreciates just how easy the Fireboxes were to deploy. “All in all, the solutions we deployed met our needs as an organization. It gave us a reliable VPN connection like we haven’t had before and we can protect all the employees that are connected to the network,” remarked Onur.

Results

Since the user interfaces were easy to use, ASAM was able to deploy the solutions quickly and the process was seamless. Satisfied with the support and ease of deployment they received, ASAM is planning on equipping more offices in the future with additional models. With WatchGuard, the association feels confident that they could scale their security solution as they begin to open more offices.

Not only do they have peace of mind that their network is protected, but also the performance of their network won’t be impacted. Onur concluded: “Now security is one less thing for us to worry about. And that means we have more time for employee productivity so we can focus on growing and supporting our organization. With WatchGuard, we know that we are protected in each of our offices.”