Topaz Energy and Marine secures its network and increases productivity with Dell SonicWALL

Topaz, which provides marine and engineering solutions to the global energy industry, was in danger of losing business critical information due to a vulnerable system.

As a result, Dell SonicWALL was called in to deploy its firewalls solutions in two locations in 2004, and across all offices worldwide within a year.

"Clearly, protecting and preserving business critical data and managing bandwidth are key components of proper network management and efficiency. No business is too small to neglect proper network security," said Sanjay Kumar, IT manager for Topaz Energy and Marine.

"The amount of data being transmitted across company networks has grown exponentially in recent years and we needed a solution to protect our rapidly growing network across the Middle East and North African region," he added.

In 2008, Topaz deployed Dell SonicWALL's backup and recovery appliance Continuous Data Protection CDP 6080, which was upgraded from the CDP 4440i appliance deployed in 2006. In 2010 Topaz upgraded its legacy SonicWALL firewalls to the new Dell SonicWALL E-Class NSA and NSA series and E-Class Email Security Appliance 6000.

"We are especially happy with how Dell SonicWALL firmware was upgraded automatically. This means that our systems are always up to date and robust. Subsequently, bandwidth performance improved markedly leaving plenty of room to scale," continued Kumar.

Topaz developed a system where each office has two Internet connections; one lease line for VPN and a second line for Internet access, both protected by a Dell SonicWALL Next-Generation Firewall. In addition, Topaz uses the Dell SonicWALL Application Intelligence and Control feature to control and manage accesses to social media sites and rules sets are based on management requirements and decisions.

As with any global business, employees often work on the move connecting to their business-critical data through laptops, smart-phones and tablets. Secure access and data dissemination has therefore become paramount for Topaz IT executives to prevent malicious attacks and manage bandwidth.

Dell SonicWALL, as part of the Dell Software organization, is currently working on securing the Topaz network to include mobile devices. Plans are underway for Topaz to install Dell SonicWALL Aventail E-Class SSL VPN, which provides users of Windows, Macintosh, Linux, iOS, Android and Windows Mobile devices 'in-office' experience. This will give easy and secure access to executives who are constantly travelling and enable them to keep abreast of important news.

"The IT team utilized a range of our security appliances to deliver a stable network environment across its offices worldwide and yield tangible business benefits embodied in high employee efficiency," said Shanawaz Sheikh, Dell SonicWALL's regional director, Middle East, Africa and Turkey.