Premiere's Web Access Secured, Thanks to Bloxx

“Bloxx removes the need for IT management intervention and replaces it with a secure, automated way of securing our employees’ web access”

Spencer Sutton, Network Administrator, Premiere Products

Company Background

Based in Cheltenham Gloucestershire, Premiere Products is an independent manufacturer of high performance cleaning chemicals and machines, and a distributor of cleaning systems and equipment. The company is represented in over forty countries and has customers throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

With over 80 years experience, Premiere Products has built up a name in the industry for giving priorities to customer service, product quality and innovation.

“We manufacture high performance solutions used in a variety of markets for customers as diverse as Retail and Education,” explained Premiere Products Network Administrator, Spencer Sutton.

The Challenge

Employing over 200 staff, Premiere Products was keen to prevent malware, virus and other undesirable Internet based files getting into the company’s network through the Internet.

“I went to a seminar that warned of a new breed of virus scripts that traditional antivirus products couldn’t catch, so I wanted to be able to limit employees’ web access to eliminate these new dangers,” said Sutton.

The previous system Spencer used limited URL lists to block web sites, however he was far from impressed. “The whole console feel was very weak and we had to use a separate proxy to host the white and black lists,” he surmised. “We also found the creation of reports for the departmental managers time consuming and cumbersome to create, lacking detail and were too complex for managers to understand.”

The Solution

Premiere Products installed a Bloxx web filtering appliance to operate with its Watchguard Firebox 700 firewall.

Bloxx is an easy to manage, drop-in hardware solution which uses internationally patent pending technology to analyse and block web sites quicker and more accurately than other web filters using manual classification and keyword scoring alone. Bloxx helps establishments such as Premiere Products proactively manage users’ access to web content which might lower productivity, expose the organisation to risk and liability or pose a network security threat.

Sutton immediately set up user access policies to ensure that the most dangerous sites, such as webmail, MSN and anonymous proxies were blocked to reduce the risk from web-borne security threats. He also created user policies to ensure that necessary and acceptable business-critical sites could still be accessed.

The Results

“There was a definite need for us to be more savvy as our network grew; Bloxx has met this need and enabled us to be one step ahead of possible security breaches,” explained Sutton.

Premiere Products’ internet connection performance has increased by 50% since installing Bloxx because of the effeciency of the technology and the fact that web access no longer needs to run through two sperate proxies.

“Bloxx removes the need for IT management intervention and replaces it with a secure, automated way of securing our employees’ web access,” added Sutton. “We have seen a marked decrease in security issues and I have ten hours of my week back!”

“The unsurpassed functionaility of Bloxx, coupled with its unprecedented ease of use makes it an attractive prospect to IT managers,” comments Bloxx Sales and Marketing Director, Paul Irvine. “Companies such as Premiere Products are able to concentrate on other areas of the business, safe in the knowledge that Bloxx is keeping their staff and network safe from the dangers of the web.”