JACKSONVILLE, Fla.-All credit unions face the challenge to responsibily protect enterprise and member data from malware attacks unknowingly downloaded via otherwise seemingly harmless employee Web browser searches. But just because defenses are in place doesn't mean data is safe.
"We had been using a Web content filter that was recommended to us by another credit union for about seven years. As our needs grew we found that it had become very cumbersome and was also generating a lot of false positives," said 121 Financial Credit Union's Director of Information Systems, Larry Rouse. "Successive upgrades to the software seemed to be making the problem worse instead of better."
Complaints about its existing filter included that it hampered normal business operations and was "annoying" to the users, explained Rouse. The administrator interface was also deemed too complex and difficult to use, especially when implementing exceptions to standard operations.
"Although it integrated with our active directory, the synchronization was not automatic and it only imported users, which then had to be added to groups within the web filter to allow appropriate access," said Rouse. "In all it was a very drawn-out process and added to the time that it took to set up a new user on the network, or even accomplish a move when a user changed position within the credit union."
Rouse and his IT team began seeking alternatives. Over the course of a few months in 2012 they attended demonstrations by vendors such as Websense, M86 and Barracuda. While the offerings were robust, they proved too cumbersome for the 37,000-member, $435-million credit union, which has140 employees and nine branches.
"We finally narrowed our search down to two possibilities. One had a very powerful product that performed a lot of functions with an excellent interface, but it was clear that it was too much work for us to support with our small shop. The Bloxx solution seemed to be just as robust, but had the simpler interface and setup. It was the perfect fit for an organization of our size."
Reducing Demands On IT
Eamonn Doyle, president of the Boston-based Bloxx, explained that traditional Web filters block Websites from a list of known URLs, whereas his advanced real-time content categorization engine, Tru-View Technology, analyzes and categorizes page content to ensure compliance with corporate Web access policies. Web pages are placed into one of 50 categories with respective blocking per the credit union's access policy. This, he said, cuts down on IT time and resources traditionally spent processing special requests for access to select sites.
"From the time we decided on Bloxx to going live was less than 90 days," recalled Rouse. To ensure a successful launch, a 14-day beta test was administered to configure Tru-View Technology to a subset of the credit union's users.
"A group policy was created for those users that directed their web proxy away from the existing filter to the new solution," said Rouse. "The only difference was when a user went to a blocked sight. The warning page looked different than they were used to."
When the testing phase was completed, the launch went off with only one minor hiccup, which was directing users to the new proxy. This issue was related to 121 Financial CU's group policy propagation. "These issues were easily resolved and the unit has been nearly flawless since," said Rouse.
The Who, The What, The When
Rouse's goal to determine who visited what sites and when, was achieved. With the Bloxx solution configured as a web proxy, all Internet requests now go through the appliance. Each user is authenticated to the new solution using their network session credentials. This way every request is tied to a specific user. Rouse can control employee access to personal webmail, social networking and other sites that present a security or liability risk while monitoring usage of acceptable, but non-business related sites.
"In our company we allow some personal use of the Internet as long as it doesn't interfere with credit union business," said Rouse.
