"When we had the Clearswift Web software in place we had no problems at all with viruses or malware, which was another reason why we chose to implement the appliance – we knew Clearswift provides excellent protection against such threats..."
Gavin Singh, IT Support Manager
M&C Saatchi is a global advertising agency renowned for its work with companies such as British Airways and KFC. It was founded in 1995 following the Saatchi brothers' departure from Saatchi & Saatchi and now has 18 offices in 13 countries. In 2004, 49 per cent of the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange's AIM.
Gavin Singh is IT Support Manager at the company's headquarters and manages the IT needs of all the staff based there. Singh has been at M&C Saatchi for a year and a half and leads a team of six. As a creative business, having access to the Internet is vital to M&C Saatchi employees. In the advertising industry it is important to keep on top of current affairs and trends and to be completely familiar with what is happening on the web. However, the IT team needs to ensure Internet use does not pose a threat to either the business or its staff, as well as maintaining a reliable system with minimum downtime, meaning no virus or malware attacks.
It is also important for M&C Saatchi to control exactly what staff have access to, in order to maximise client-related working time. "At M&C Saatchi we need to be flexible with our Internet use policy. Different staff have different requirements for their Internet access and it is the IT team that has the duty of meeting these requirements," says Singh. "Within the creative industries, much emphasis is being placed on new Web 2.0 concepts such as Second Life and Facebook and employees are naturally wanting to experiment. We have to be able to ensure they can do this both safely and within company policy. For us, content security is the key – we need security that guards against harmful or restricted content, without denying access to anything relevant."
"In other workplaces, previous to joining M&C Saatchi, we had used basic firewalls to protect IT systems. However, I knew that the nature of the business here called for a far more robust and flexible solution," says Singh.
When Singh joined M&C Saatchi, Clearswift's MIMEsweeper for Web software had already been in place for three years. Although he and his team were pleased with the level of protection the software was providing, Singh had kept abreast of developments in the IT security sector and was keen to try the new MIMEsweeper Web Appliance.
The MIMEsweeper Web Appliance has powerful and easy-to-use reporting functions. These allow IT support teams to set up custom reports that are specifically relevant to their security needs. For instance, it is possible to monitor a particular employee's use of a certain website, or to find out one department's most used URLs. The web-based interface is designed to allow users to manage, update, monitor and report quickly and easily.
"The reports are very straightforward to set-up and use. We have implemented numerous custom reports, which, for example, look at how long an employee is spending on a certain website. From there we can decide whether we need to take any action or whether to put a policy in place relating to that site," says Singh. "The real boon is that all six of the IT team can set up reports because the user interface is so simple to use."
"We are very pleased with the security provided by the Clearswift MIMEsweeper Web Appliance and believe it's the right product to protect M&C Saatchi against web-based threats. It allows the IT team to individualise security measures, which is vital in a company as diverse as this. The Appliance has meant we've had absolutely no spyware or virus scares, and we're confident we're fully protected against all contentbased threats. The Appliance has saved the IT team a lot of time that could have been spent on administration with less easy-to-use products – it has definitely increased productivity and we're looking forward to it continuing to do so," says Singh.
