Bloxx Internet Filtering Proves Best Fit for Easton-Bell Sports

“When we brought in the Bloxx appliance and compared it to the other solutions, we were overwhelmingly impressed with the technology; it was like night and day. Another huge selling point was that their pricing structure is based on traffic load and not ‘per user’ so we receive the best value for our money.”

Matt Baskett, Network Operations Manager, Easton Bell Sports

Background

Easton-Bell Sports, Inc., (EBS) is a leading designer, developer and marketer of sports equipment and accessories for athletic and recreational activities, including baseball, football, cycling, hockey, and snow sports. Its current focus: growing power sports. The firm, created in 2006 by a merger between Riddell Bell and Easton Sports, has sales over $700 million with over 30 sites and 1,000 plus employees throughout the United States.

The Challenge

Easton-Bell Sports was growing increasingly concerned about its bandwidth consumption, as well as the time IT staff members were spending removing malware from employees’ computers. In addition, upper management was eager to assess employee Internet use and its affect on productivity. The rising importance of these issues caused the company to seek out a cost-effective Internet filtering solution.

“We noticed that many employees were streaming audio/video and that it was taking up a lot of bandwidth and bogging down the network,” says Matt Baskett, Network Operations Manager at EBS. “We had no way to monitor or restrict this usage, which is one of the main reasons we needed an Internet filtering product.”

Concerned about the security of EBS’s network, Baskett says: “IT personnel were spending a lot of their time clearing malware from employee computers. We needed to guard ourselves against advertisements and malicious software.” Baskett realized that, with the growth of the Internet, security measures cannot remain static, and URL databases only address a small percentage of the web’s ever-increasing number of URLs. “We were looking for a solution that could deliver filtering beyond a database,” he states.

The Solution

After extensively evaluating a number of different web filtering solutions, Baskett and his team selected Bloxx’s web filtering appliance as the most satisfying solution for EBS. It is a dynamic content filtering solution that uses industry-leading Tru-View Technology to analyze, categorize and filter websites in real time. The all-in-one Bloxx appliance includes: Web filtering; reporting tools; caching; IM and P2P control, malware blocking, and anonymous proxy filtering capabilities.

“When we brought in the Bloxx appliance and compared it to the other solutions, we were overwhelmingly impressed with the technology; it was like night and day. Another huge selling point was that their pricing structure is based on traffic load and not ‘per user’ so we receive the best value for our money,” explains Baskett.

By choosing to proactively manage user access to web content with Tru-View Technology, EBS have been able to increase productivity, enhance Internet security, and significantly reduce IT costs, risk, and liability.

The Results

“With roughly 1000 users being tracked, we have noticed a significant reduction in bandwidth consumption – it has been reduced by almost half,” says Baskett, who references two correlative results: bandwidth cost savings and decreased network latency. In addition, with employee no longer spending their time on YouTube or viewing other streaming media, staff productivity has improved considerably.

After heightening its network security, Easton-Bell Sports now blocks malicious software and advertising, and, in turn, has significantly reduced IT management time spent on these problems.

“Within two hours of powering up the Bloxx appliance we had over 3,000 spyware requests blocked,” notes Baskett. “This is a big deal as our Help desks had been spending a large amount of time clearing off malware. We have seen a huge improvement with the Bloxx filtering solution in place and now our IT staff can focus on more important responsibilities.”

Bloxx’s filtering appliance is an extremely useful tool for EBS’s HR department in addressing employee productivity issues.

“It even allows HR to create policies for different groups of employees, depending on the type of websites they need for their job responsibilities. EBS does not actively monitor employee Internet usage, but when HR comes to us about an employee who they think might be having productivity issues, we can quickly run a report for their records, which they have found to be extremely useful,” says Baskett.

In addition, Baskett is extremely happy with the support response time. “The support team at Bloxx has been very responsive. If I send an email or make a call, someone typically gets back to me within fifteen minutes.”

From reducing bandwidth consumption and IT costs, to improving Internet security and the company’s overall performance, Bloxx’s Tru-View Technology has proved to be the ideal solution for EBS’s IT crossroads.