Walters-Dimmick Petroleum Secures Store Broadband with Safe@Office and SMP On-Demand

Walters-Dimmick Petroleum, Inc., (WDP) is a marketer of Shell petroleum products with a primary focus on the distribution of Shell fuels across Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. The company maintains a large network of Shell-branded retail facilities operated by company personnel and independent dealers. In addition to selling Shell gasoline, all sites incorporate convenience stores and may also include fast food restaurants such as Subway, Jimmy John’s, and Quiznos. Sites may also have car washes, ATMs, phone card services, and other services. Where possible, many of these products and services are combined onto a single site to provide a quick and easy way for customers to get the quality products and services they want within one convenient retail location.

WDP manages more than 58 locations, each of which requires an Internet connection for secure email access and corporate communications. When the company replaced its dial-up service with broadband, it hired a managed service provider (MSP) to implement a complete high-speed DSL solution that included Check Point Safe@Office® appliances. “Once we went to an always-up Internet solution, we knew we needed security,” says Dale Williams, director of IT and retail operations for Walters-Dimmick Petroleum.

In order to effectively manage the Safe@Office appliances within geographically distributed WDP retail locations, Williams selected Security Management Portal (SMP) On-Demand™ from Check Point. SMP On-Demand is a fully-hosted central management and service provisioning platform delivered as a “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS). Williams appreciated that SMP On-Demand featured an intuitive, Web-based user interface to manage all of the Safe@Office gateways from a single location. WDP also selected the Check Point solution because it required a minimal upfront investment and low administrative and support costs.

Another important factor that influenced William’s decision was that the Check Point solution exceeded the requirements for PCI compliance, including:

• Protecting systems containing cardholder data from Internet threats
• Securing transmission of cardholder data across public networks
• Enforcing access and authorization policies across networked systems
• Providing application protection for Web-facing systems
• Delivering real-time security updates to keep security systems current
• Simplifying management, reporting, and analysis of security systems

With WDP’s secure broadband in place, the company has improved operations across all of its locations by actively managing IT security, including spam filtering and Web content monitoring; thereby ensuring security is consistently deployed company-wide. “We can manage everything centrally now to ensure all of our locations are online and operating properly,” says Williams. “It’s a tremendous sense of comfort to know that your business is up and running and protected.”

The Safe@Office appliances also provide a key benefit for WDP’s remote locations that aren’t able to receive broadband service. In those instances, WDP uses a wireless Internet card plugged into the USB port of the Safe@Office appliance. It’s another example of how WDP has freed itself of costly phone lines.

“So many things in our line of business require technology. We rely heavily on our infrastructure, not just to work, but to work well. In the case of communications and Internet access, we’ve been able to replace a lot of expensive phone lines,” says Williams, who estimates that eliminating two or more phone lines pays for secure broadband. “In addition, we’ve been able to install video surveillance and offer wireless Internet access to customers.”