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Synovis Life Technologies Eliminates Spam with Barracuda Networks
Technology Category
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Malware Protection
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Security Compliance
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
With more than 400 employees depending on email for vital business communication, the amount of spam bombarding the company inboxes was crippling. Synovis’ technical services department was using a server-based anti-spam software solution that was fairly successful within their headquarters, however, large amounts of spam continued to attack the satellite offices’ networks. When the company decided to implement a WAN (Wide Area Network) to connect its four offices, Knight knew it was essential to find a solution to regain control of email quickly. Knight investigated other antispam solutions as well as considered upgrading the existing server-based anti-spam software, but found both options were expensive.
About The Customer
Synovis Life Technologies, Inc., is a diversified medical device company that develops, manufactures, and markets specialty medical products for use in thoracic, cardiac, neuro, vascular, and ophthalmic surgery. Consisting of three companies and with four offices throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, the company has seen significant growth in the past few years. Along with this growth came a few growing pains in the technical services department, the largest of which was caused by an outside source attacking the company—spam.
The Solution
Knight discovered Barracuda Networks after carefully researching several competitors on the Internet, as well as through trade publication reviews and at IT security tradeshows. The Barracuda Spam Firewall 300 was everything Synovis needed—scalability coupled with an extensive feature set—all at a fraction of the competitors’ price. Out of the box using only factory settings, the Barracuda Spam Firewall 300 stopped a remarkable 95 percent of spam. After some additional fine-tuning and customization to the blacklists and subject filtering, Knight reports the Barracuda Spam Firewall 300 now blocks more than 99.8 percent of spam. In addition, the Barracuda Spam Firewall 300 successfully blocks viruses from entering the Synovis network and significantly reduces the amount of traffic to the exchange server by controlling the size of emails getting through. Along with these benefits, Knight appreciates the customizable reports, which the Synovis technical staff use to review the amount of spam and viruses that are blocked as well as to determine the total amount of email that the server is servicing. Such reports can then be used for making purchasing decisions for new equipment as the needs of the network continue to increase.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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