Phoenix International spends 80% less time on IT security thanks to Check Point

Phoenix International
Phoenix International, a privately held multinational corporation in Italy, is a leader in custom steel dyes for aluminum artifacts. Founded in 1972, the company has built a reputation for delivering customized projects with a rapid turnaround. Working across the industrial, transport, building, automotive and aerospace industries, the company has branches worldwide.

Protecting data around the world
To keep ahead of the competition, Phoenix relies heavily on IT security: to ensure business continuity and to protect the technical and process data that contains the company’s industrial secrets. The company has had a strong partnership with Italian IT system integrator, Project Informatica, for many years. Together with Project Informatica’s dedicated ICT & Cybersecurity division, a project was launched to replace Phoenix’s old IT system with a better performing, centralized and secure one. Project Informatica managed the whole process from pre-sale to post- installation.

Stefano Biava, IT Manager for Phoenix International, explains; “Last year we addressed the issue of IT security, both for data and for employee privacy. We had no consistency in the security solutions being used worldwide, with branches each using different security brands. This was making IT security difficult to monitor and maintain. We conducted a vulnerability assessment to understand how to deal with the problem.”

Project Informatica carried out the security assessment and the results were collated and analyzed over a long period of time in order to understand how best to protect the company’s perimeter. The project was made more challenging as Phoenix International was also going through a phase of business growth, opening new branches around the world and placing added pressure on the IT team.

An impenetrable barrier
A Check Point Next Generation Security Gateway had been tested in Dubai when a new branch opened, but this was an isolated case with multiple software brands being used in Phoenix offices around the world.

“We analyzed the various solutions on the market,” says Biava, “and we chose Check Point Next Generation Threat Prevention software, not only for its favorable price/performance ratio but also for its easy and efficient centralized management console. We decided to deploy Check Point at the new sites, as well as replacing our old firewalls with Check Point Next Generation Security Gateway.”

The Next Generation Security Gateway provides multi-layered protection from known, signature-based threats and unknown threats. The solution includes anti- virus software that blocks malicious files before they enter the network, URL filtering software to control access to millions of websites, and anti-bot software to detect bot- infected machines and actively block bot communications.

The solution is managed via a unified security management platform, which provides a single pane of glass to view threats, devices, users and reports across the whole network, in real-time.

More protection and continuity with less management effort
Thanks to Check Point Next Generation Security Gateway and Project Informatica, managing Phoenix’s security services around the world has been simplified.

“We cut the time we spend on managing security by 80% and, thanks to the simplicity of the Check Point solution, 90% of our daily IT security activities are now automated,” says Biava.

“Phoenix International has several different security hardware devices,” says Luca Rota, System Engineer at Project Informatica, “all of them are monitored and managed autonomously by the Check Point central management console. This system also allows us to collect events and track performance data.”

“Not only has business continuity improved with the Check Point solution, but device configuration is simplified and much faster,” says Biava. “Before Check Point, it took days because we had to go to each device. Now it takes just minutes from a central console at our headquarters.”