Q&A: How Sun National Copes with Malware

The monsters that haunt PCs come with odd names from out of mythology, like Zeus; or out of science fiction, like SpyEye; or even out of the ground, e.g. worms. But whatever they're called, keeping up with malware is as hard as ever, with new strains coming out practically every week.

Angelo Valletta, CIO and senior vice president, and Greg Pentz, vice president of business systems liaisons for Vineland, N.J.-based Sun National Bank spoke with us about their line of counter attack, which includes the help of virus experts and technology from LANDesk to centralize the process the bank uses to locate viruses, learn about new strains, test computers for security and disaster recovery, and deploy  patches to protect the bank's desktop PCs and laptops.

Centralizing the effort has allowed the $3.2 billion asset bank to save steps such as dispatching a consultant to physically travel to each location and patch the PCs from a CD. Instead, the bank uses a single console that integrates and centralizes multiple security layers, automates patch management, encrypts data, enforces endpoint security policies and grants network access from a single management system. It's a move that's saved the bank about $224,000 in yearly salary and benefit costs, as well as the travel and time expense of manual patches.

BTN: How many PCs are you managing, and what's the mix of internal PCs versus external laptops that access the network via VPN?
 
Pentz: We have about 1,000 desktops; about 15 percent used by remote users. Our lending groups, mortgage company and other traveling staff have the ability to take laptops out of the office. There are a lot of challenges in managing those users. When you give users an outside internet connection, there's lots of security risks that come along with that. We use LANDesk to make sure all of the machines are up to date with patching, whether they are connected to our network or are out on the Internet. We can push out  patches and tasks so a machine that isn't on the network can run spyware scans and remain up to date. Any function in our environment can be pushed out to external computing devices at any given time.
 
BTN: How did centralizing the management of PC security help you? And how were these tasks managed before the new tech deployment?
 

Pentz: We had different systems to manage the desktop environment, it was done through multiple products and vendors, through tools provided through key vendors, and through remote control tools and anti-virus tools. But we didn't have a system to manage that under one umbrella. The new system manages everything that's involved with the PCs - the hardware, software, lifecycle monitoring, software deployment, etc.

BTN: If you weren't centralizing PC security protection, how would that process work?
 
Pentz: We would have to go out and search for virus updates and patches for all of the ancillary programs and products that we use, creating a management nightmare. We would have to rely more on the end user to ensure their machines were up to date with our high standards. LANDesk provides us with the opportunity to get instant reporting on any machines out of compliance and remediate them immediately. 
 
Valletta: You're swimming upstream in that environment. The beauty of LANDesk is managing from a centralized location. We work with our security division to find gaps; we haven't found any as of yet. Centralizing our efforts allows us to control what we can control and manage the fight against vulnerabilities, not let the vulnerabilities manage Sun National Bank.