Hero Honda Motors Selects Cyberoam forReliable and Cost-effective Network Protection

Background

The Challenge

In April, 1984 Hero Cycles, India and Honda Motor Company, Japan inked a

joint venture and the world's single largest motorcycle company was born.

Hero Honda Motors Limited (HHML) is the World No. 1 two wheeler company

and one of Honda Motor Company's most successful joint ventures, globally.

HHML's performance was nothing less than a revolution on two-wheels. Hero

Honda has sold over 15 million motorcycles and has consistently shown a

double digit growth since its inception. Today, every second, a motorcycle sold

in the country is a Hero Honda.

In two decades, Hero Honda has built two world-class manufacturing facilitiesat Dharuhera and Gurgaon in Haryana. These facilities now churn out over 3.5million motorbikes per year.

“Our external mail server forwards the corporate mails to the internal mail

server that is deployed in our LAN over SMTP. The internal mail server is a

central mail repository from where all the employees pop their individual mails.

We have ISP level security which consists of a firewall, spam filter and anti-

virus,” Mr. Avnesh Jain (Sr. Manager, Information Systems, HHML) informed.

“However, we soon found that ISP level security was inadequate.”

HHMLfaced Internet access and security issues related to:

Spam mails

Malware attacks originating from mail and Web

Web filtering

Bandwidth choking

“HHML received around 26000 mails per day, which translated to almost 1GBof storage space. Out of these at least 70% were spam. That was around18500 spam mails per day. The ISP was able to filter out around 50%. Still,almost 9000 mails hit our internal mail server each day.

We did try out a few standalone, software-based spam filters with littlesuccess,” said Mr. Jain.

“Mails are the front-end for any organization. Apart from a vast number ofemployees, HHML also has a vast chain of dealers and service stationsspread across the country. So mails exchange often got lost in the maze ofspam and the business suffered. Often business mails were wrongly classifiedas spam false positives and deleted while spam still poured in.”

Mail boxes were clogged with spam mails. All the employees based in NewDelhi, Dharuhera and Gurgoan plant, POP their mails from the local mailserver.

••••

"Cyberoam's maximizesReturn Over Investment.We are fully satisfied withCyberoam Unified ThreatManagement solution.”

“HHML received around

26000 mails per day; out of

these at least 70% were

spam. That was around

18500 spam mails per day.”

Mr. Avnesh Jain

(Sr. Manager, Information

Systems, HHML)

Hero Honda, New Delhi

Case StudyUnified Threat Management

www.cyberoam.com

Organization

Hero Honda, New Delhi

Industry

Automobile

Approximately 9000 spam mails hitting the local mail server was simply notacceptable as:

Downloading the legitimate mails and approximately 9000 spam mails fromthe external mail server to the local mail server was a painfully slow and quitefrequently a frustrating process.

Bandwidth consumption did not just increase, it shot through the roof and tokeep adding bandwidth was not a viable solution.

Once the mails reached the individual's mailboxes, they had to be checkedand deleted manually. Many times the recipients were tempted to read thespam mails and the mail processing time kept increasing at the cost ofproductivity.

Legitimate mails were often lost in the maze of spam.

The management began questioning the IT department regarding the extentof spam, which was mostly unanswerable, despite IT's best efforts.

Employees stationed at remote locations like Gurgoan and Dharuheraplant were the worst hit. For them, the mail was first downloaded to the localmail server and then had to be POPed to their remote individual mail box. Thedownload time of an individual mail was very high this was particularlyfrustrating since at least 50 % of the mail was spam.

The spam mails had a good share of Phishing mails which slipped throughthe primary security layer stationed with ISP.

Malware entering through mails and Internet browsing was also a majorsource of concern.

A lot of mails contained malicious payload which consisted of viruses,spyware and Trojans. These malware, once it entered the network, consumedthe bandwidth and caused system crashes.

Unprotected and unrestricted Internet browsing also left gaping securityholes. Malicious site surfing left the organization vulnerable to malware,malicious tracking cookies, spywares and keyloggers.

In absence of web filtering and access accountability, the little bandwidth thatwas left was consumed by unrestricted surfing. This proved detrimental to theorganization's productivity. Lack of Internet usage accountability led tomalicious sites being surfed, which in turn infected the network with a host ofspyware.

As a remedy to slow browsing and other bandwidth problems, HHML wasforced to upgrade its initial 64kbps Internet connection to a 4MB pipe. Yet, thecomplaints persisted.

“HHML purchased a total of four Cyberoam appliances; one 250i CyberoamUTM appliance for our corporate office in New Delhi and one each for theproduction plants at Dharuhera and Gurgaon,” said Mr.Jain. “We havepurchased a 100i for our upcoming new facility Haridwar unit. We havedeployed all the Cyberoam appliances in bridge mode. While the first layer of

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Cyberoam Solution

“Cyberoam's anti-virussolution scans SMTP, IMAP,POP3 mail protocols andH T T P a n d F T Pp r o t o c o l s , l e a v i n g n osecurity gaps.”

"Our Slow browsing and lowbandwidth ava i lab i l i typroblem was solved withoutf u r t h e r b a n d w i d t hinvestments."

“Cyberoam's identity-basedWeb fi l ter ing ensuresemployee accountability,

which in turn leads todecrease in harmful andunproductive surfing. IPspoofing has also beencurbed effectively”

Unified Threat Management Case Study

defense existed at the ISP level, while Cyberoam provides the crucial secondlayer of defense as the entire mail and web traffic passes through it,” said headded.

“Cyberoam maximizes Return Over Investment. It even exceeded ourexpectations,” said Mr. Jain.

Cyberoam's anti spam feature effectively got rid of 9000 odd spam mails perday. The employees were pleasantly surprised to find spam-free inboxes.

“We reclaimed our inboxes they now are clean and safe,” said Mr. Jain. “Wesaved time and our legitimate mails were no longer buried in a heap of spam.”

As spam disappeared, inter-office connectivity benefited greatly. Employeesat the remote site no longer have to wait indefinitely for their mails to bedownloaded. Bandwidth used to connect remote offices was also saved.

Cyberoam's anti-spam solution not only blocked spam, but also provedeffective against any type of mail-based threats. The solution used RecurrentPattern Detection technology. It is content-agnostic and equally effectiveagainst image based spam. Pattern detection technology ensured minimumwindow of vulnerability, providing zero hour protection to the HHMLnetwork.

Cyberoam's anti-virus solution scans SMTP, IMAP, POP3 mail protocols andHTTP and FTP protocols, leaving no security gaps. As all the web-basedtraffic is scanned for spyware and malware, clean and secure web surfingbecame a reality.

Cyberoam's identity-based web filtering ensures employee accountability,which in turn leads to decrease in harmful and unproductive surfing. The ITdepartment has created groups and assigned Internet access rights based ontheir business profile in HHML. Cyberoam's HTTP client is used toauthenticate the user. As the web filtering rules are implemented on the user'sidentity and not just on the IP address, IP spoofing has been curbed effectively.

Internet access is now productively focused. This is amply reflected in thebandwidth usage. Once insufficient, bandwidth availability is now satisfactory.Total bandwidth consumption fell sharply and the ISP bills also took a nosedive.

Clean network, safe and responsible surfing and spam free mail boxesresulted in a drastic fall in IT helpdesk calls. The company's IT resources areproductively focused.

“We are satisfied, completely with Cyberoam UTM,” said Mr. Jain.

“We reclaimed our inboxesthey now are clean andsafe.”

“Clean virus free network,safe and responsible surfingand spam free mail boxesresulted in a drastic fall in IThelpdesk cal ls . Thecompany's IT resources areproductively focused."

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Unified Threat Management,

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