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Three Ways to Protect Your Business Against Ransomware-as-a-Service

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Last week I was at one of our sales offices in Utah. I heard an interesting story about how a dentist office called in to ask for threat prevention against ransomware. The dentist office had been affected by ransomware twice in a short period of time. Twice, they paid the ransom to ensure business continuity and customer retention. This is a common story across many small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) though we seldom hear about them in the media.

According to a study conducted in June 2016 by Osterman Research Inc., 30 percent of the ransom amounts demanded are $500 or less, reflecting the size of businesses affected by the attacks. SonicWall’s GRID threat research team has seen massive increases in ransomware infections for 2016, mostly coming from small and medium businesses. A new variant of ransomware, Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), designed to be user friendly and deployable by anyone, can simply download the virus either for free or for a simple fee.

Ransomware-as-a-Service

Even simple measures can help protect against ransomware. Here are three ways:

Training

The same study shows that 67 percent of U.S. cyberattacks originate via phishing through emails. Organizations requiring employees to do security awareness training once a year at least are less likely to get infected than companies that do it less frequently. Training alone is not sufficient, but can provide the necessary first line of defense for a lot of businesses.

Data backup

Ransomware exists because organizations keep paying the attackers for their data.  With a good data backup infrastructure, businesses can redeem itself quickly by cleaning up their network and restoring the data from backup.

Technology

Advanced threats like ransomware attack all kinds of businesses. After multiple attacks, a big business can revive itself and get back on track. However, SMBs cannot afford such multiple attacks. Small amounts paid multiple times can quickly add up, and result in closure of a small business. It is even more important today for SMBs to invest in strong and advanced security solutions available through next-generation firewalls.

SonicWall firewalls have been protecting SMBs all over the globe for more than 25 years. With the comprehensive SonicWALL Gateway Security Suite providing gateway anti-virus, URL/web filtering and intrusion prevention services, businesses were protected 24x7x365 against known malware. With the recent increase in unknown malware and zero-day threats, the new Advanced Gateway Security Suite (AGSS) includes SonicWall Capture ATP,  a multi-engine network sandboxing solution, providing advanced threat protection to all SonicWall firewalls including the TZ Series for SMBs.

Discover best practices and download our solution brief: How to protect against ransomware.

Use the Advanced Gateway Security Suite from SonicWall.

Download Solution Brief

Three Tough Questions You Must Ask About HTTPS to Avoid Cyber Attacks

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Preventing your organization from being the victim of an inevitable cyber-attack is paramount so it is important for us to kick off this blog with an important risk question.

Do you know whether or not your organization‘s firewall is inspecting HTTPS traffic traversing its networks?

I have polled this question on numerous webinars I have conducted over the past year. The results consistently showed the majority of organizations have yet to perform HTTPS inspection as part of their defense strategy. With HTTPS on the rise, accounting for nearly two-third of your organization’s internet traffic today, hackers have expanded their craft to use the protocol to obfuscate their attacks and malware from security systems. Your timely response to this new threat could mean the difference between experiencing a material breach versus successfully averting one. Of course, the latter would be desirable. So, should you have the slightest doubt about your organization’s security posture to deal with encrypted threats, I want you to immediately pause and resume reading this post after you have spoken to your IT security leaders. I’d like you to raise your concerns about the potential millions of intrusions and tens of thousands of malware attacks launched against your organization each and every hour – many of which are likely new versions of ransomware delivered inside of HTTPS sessions. If the firewall is not inspecting this traffic, it would not have the ability to understand what is inside that traffic – whether a file is benign or malicious, credit cards being stolen or financial and health records were being shared with an external system. I hope you return to this blog with a sigh of relief that your organization is not among the majority of respondents that do not.

You got the good news that your organization is inspecting HTTPS traffic. The next logical question is:

“Has your organization experienced frequent network service disruptions or downtime as a result of a total collapse of your firewall performance when inspecting HTTPS traffic?”

Inspecting encrypted traffic is not without its set of big challenges. There are two key components of HTTPS inspection that severely impact firewall performance – establishing a secure connection and decrypting and later re-encrypting packets for secured data exchange. Unlike inspecting internet traffic in plain text, encrypted traffic introduces six additional compute processes that must occur before data is sent back and forth between a client’s browser and the web server over an HTTPS connection. Each process is highly complex and compute-intensive. Most firewall designs today don’t provide the right combination of inspection technology and hardware processing power to handle HTTPS traffic efficiently. They often collapses under the load and subsequently disrupt business-critical operations. According to NSS Labs, the performance penalty on a firewall when HTTPS inspection is enabled can be as high as 81 percent. In other words, your firewall performance is degraded to a level that it is no longer usable.

This leads us to the final and most important question:

“How can you scale firewall protection to prevent performance degradation, lag and latency of your network when inspecting HTTPS traffic?”

The right answer begins with the right inspection architecture as the foundation. Most modern firewalls today have deep packet inspection (DPI) capability claiming to solve many of the above security and performance challenges. However, not all firewalls perform equally or as advertised in the real world. In fact, many of them have inherent design inefficiencies that reduce their ability to handle today’s massive shift towards an all-encrypted Internet. You have one of two choices when it comes to inspection technology. These are Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection (RFDPI) and Packet Assembly-based. Each uses different inspection method to scan and analyze data packets as they pass the firewall. You will quickly discover the performance of most firewalls will collapse under heavy HTTPS load. To avoid a post-deployment surprise, my recommendation is to do your due diligence. Thoroughly qualify and measure all firewalls under consideration and select one that meets both your desire level of performance and security effectiveness without hidden limitations. These are fundamental metrics that you want to heavily scrutinize when selecting a firewall to perform HTTPS inspection. Establishing the right firewall foundation will give you the agility to scale your security layer and solve the performance burden of inspecting HTTPS traffic inside your data center operations.

Uncovering evasive threats hiding inside encrypted network traffic is central to the success of your network defense. For more detail information, read our Executive Brief titled, “The Dark Side of Encryption – Why your network security needs to decrypt traffic to stop hidden threats.”

Read Executive Brief

Critical Business Threats: Ransomware and Employee Online Shopping

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According to a recent PWC survey, 54 percent of respondents buy products online every month. And millions of employees shopped online yesterday with their work devices on business networks. The critical business threat: Will any of your business computers or networks get infected with malware when employees make personal online purchases?

We believe so, and our SonicWall Global Response Intelligent Defense (GRID) network research backs this up.

Good News: Chip Cards Are Working

Research gathered through the SonicWall GRID Network indicates that the new chip-and-sign credit cards and point of sale (POS) systems are more effective than legacy technologies in detecting and blocking breaches. After big data breaches at retailers like Target and Home Depot, many retailers upgraded to chip-based POS systems.

Whenever new malware is discovered, we create a software signature set that is automatically propagated to all of our customers’ firewalls, to help keep their systems safe from attack. In 2014, before the new chip cards and POS systems, our team released 14 new POS-related malware signature sets.

In 2015, this number decreased to nine new POS malware signature sets. And in 2016 to-date, after the broad adoption of chip-based cards and readers, we have only had to release a single new signature.

Bad News: SPAM Is Now a Huge Business Threat

As POS systems have become harder to hack, the bad guys are looking for more efficient ways to steal online. Falling back on the tried and true email-based phishing attacks, personal shopping phishing emails are now a real threat to your business systems and networks.

Our email security research team observes that SPAM email usually increases in volume significantly during Cyber Week, starting the week before Black Friday, then drops off after Cyber Monday. Our numbers show a dramatic 2x increase in SPAM this year from 2015. In the run-up to Thanksgiving and Black Friday we saw 110 percent growth, increasing to 143 percent growth through Cyber Monday.

One of our SPAM honeypots collected the following data for Cyber Week:

  • Average number of SPAM messages 2015: 33,725 a day
  • Average number of SPAM messages 2016: 82,888 a day

More Bad News: Ransomware Targets Businesses

Increasingly we are finding that if malware makes it into your business network, it will be ransomware. First released in 1989, ransomware can infect your system and lock out users from accessing devices or files. When the victim pays a ransom (usually electronic money or bitcoins) the device can be unlocked by the hackers. Needless to say, ransomware can put your business-critical data and systems at risk.

Network Security Must-Haves

Online shopping will only continue to grow, especially over holidays, so it’s important to be proactive to keep your business systems protected. Along with monitoring employee access and updating policies, here are some must-haves.

  • Ensure your firewall is next-generation with content filtering on, including encryption scanning and packet filters; your goal is to monitor and inspect all incoming data and stop ransomware
  • Consider a cloud-based protection service like our Capture Advanced Threat Protection Service; a good one will speed up your response time, leverage the power of multiple engines to stop zero-day attacks, and automate remediation
  • Manage network bandwidth to limit or stop streaming; streaming is one of the easiest ways to let malware in
  • We strongly recommend EV SSL certificates for every external business website
  • Vet your SSL certificates and sources, to ensure they are publicly rooted and aren’t bringing in malware from the dark web
  • Audit your SSL certificates regularly to ensure they are up to date
  • It goes without saying but back up your data regularly; if ransomware does infect your network you will need to quickly access business-critical data

Online Shopping Safety for Consumers

  • If you don’t have one yet, upgrade to a chip-based credit card
  • Always look for an EV SSL certified logo on sites you shop
  • Use mobile devices (tablets or phones) and shop with store apps from businesses you know and trust; these apps are vetted and tested
  • Avoid shopping on sites with a Windows-based laptop; Windows is the most targeted operating system (OS) for hackers
  • Remain on the site until you complete a transaction; don’t follow redirects
  • Stay current with the latest OS software updates on your devices so you have the latest security patches; always update from the trusted site of the software provider, not a third-party site or a pop up
  • Update your apps regularly, especially ones that you provide sensitive data to: credit card numbers, banking and health information
  • Create complex, hard-to-crack passwords and keep them in a secure place
  • Change your passwords often and keep them hidden ­– not on sticky notes on your computer

IT Security Done Right Enables State and Local Governments

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News reports about new data breaches have become an all too frequent occurrence.  But cyber attacks can’t and don’t stop state and local governments from getting on with the business of governing. It’s easy to fall into a state of paralytic fear about attacks and data breaches, but in the meantime, state and local governments need to deliver the services their citizens rely upon, and continue to leverage technology to expand and improve those services.

If IT security is viewed as a defense mechanism by government, and even by security professionals themselves, government doesn’t work at well as it needs to.  A more productive attitude is to view security as an enabler of ongoing and new information technology efforts, providing a secure foundation for governments to take advantage of new technologies, provide employees and citizens with the ability to access the services they need from any device, and most importantly, streamline and improve those services.

In other words, we at SonicWall want to help state and local government IT security to become the Department of Yes. Making this change in viewpoint, doing security the right way, is the subject of the Government Computer News article, Take a Positive Approach to Security.

In the article, SonicWall’s Ken Dang goes into detail on how to accomplish this. Improving protection of government assets needs to be coupled with improving legitimate access to resources, which in turn improves efficiency, a key consideration for resource-constrained IT departments. Ken discusses a contextual approach to access, in which requests are evaluated based on a case by case basis, with the particular user’s specific requests placed in the context of the time and place of the request itself.

For the contextual approach to be effective, access information needs to be shared among all the different security devices and solutions throughout the government’s IT.  It’s important to have the proper tools to do this – which we’re happy to provide –but it requires breaking down organizational silos, getting people used to the idea that security is done better when the groups responsible for the many different aspects of security cooperate and communicate.

Contextual security particularly mandates this relationship when it comes to networks and user identities. Without transparency and full awareness between the two, the opportunity to improve overall security posture becomes a lost opportunity. But when government IT embraces that transparency and awareness, and leverages its capabilities by inspecting every packet on the network, even encrypted packets (which bear an increasing share of attack exploits) – that’s the path to security done right.

Add up all the above, couple it with our cost-effective, easy to install, SonicWall next-generation firewalls and other network security solutions, and IT security for state and local governments moves away from being an obstacle and towards being an enabler of better, more effective and responsive government.

READ THE ARTICLE

Sneak Preview of the Art of the Hack with Rob Krug

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Well, it’s Peak16 time again at the Aria in Las Vegas.

Did you enjoy Peak 2015? Then check this out ““ they are actually putting me on the main stage this year. If you thought that last year was entertaining, wait till you get a load me this time.

Don’t miss my main stage presentation on Tuesday, August 30, “The Art of the Hack”.

I have been analyzing the latest threats, exploits and breach scenarios, and between you and me, it’s pretty sinister out there. To highlight key information, I have some surprises in store. What better way to deliver a fresh look at the security threat landscape than on the main stage and the big screen. I would love to divulge the details but what’s the fun in that?

Go to the PEAK16 site to get the latest agenda, with all of the keynotes, business and technical sessions on SonicWall network security, access security and email security. This is going to be an awesome event with our channel partners.

I can’t wait to see you there. In the meantime, check out these videos – and follow PEAK16 on Twitter at @SonicWall #YesPeak16 on Twitter.

Securing Your Network Before, During and After Black Friday

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It’s summertime, so that means Black Friday is only four months away. Some retailers like to get a head start on the event and offer special Black Friday deals during July as a means to generate some additional sales over the summer. There are also “Christmas in July” promotions. Most of us, however, will wait to make our purchases until the traditional start of the holiday shopping season in November.

Whether it’s over the summer or later in the year, events such as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday offer consumers an opportunity to shop for a great deal. Increasingly the researching and purchasing of items during the holiday season is done online. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF) both holiday retail sales and non-store sales increased again last year. Results from a 2015 NRF survey also found that 46 percent of holiday shopping (browsing and buying) would be done online. This was an increase over 2014 and a trend that is likely to continue in 2016.

People enjoy shopping online for many reasons: it’s convenient, there are no crowds, you can often get better deals, and it’s easier to compare items. No wonder it’s become a popular activity, both at home and at the office. And for many employers, that’s the problem. Online shopping at work negatively impacts productivity. It’s like taking an extended lunch break on your computer. It also introduces security risks to the company’s network. Who knows whether the sites employees visit to make purchases are legitimate and aren’t sources for malware distribution.

Shopping isn’t the only online activity that affects organizations. In 2016 there are a slew of sporting events drawing worldwide interest: March Madness and the Ryder Cup in the US, Euro 2016 in France, the Summer Olympics in Brazil to name a few. Like they do with online shopping, employees will be spending time at work focused on something other than their jobs. For example, streaming live events at the office is very popular, albeit somewhat risky. Read Wilson Lee’s blog “Zika is not the only virus you can get by watching the Olympics” for details on the threat streaming the Olympics can pose to your network.

In addition to productivity and security concerns, streaming video opens up a third issue for employers which is the consumption of network bandwidth for a non-essential activity. In fact, during the last Summer Olympics in 2012, Los Angeles City Hall employees were asked to stop watching the games online at work due to the high volume of network traffic it was generating.

Whether or not online shopping and watching streamed sporting events during work are approved by management, most employees will be engaged in these activities at some point. Knowing this, what steps can organizations take to maintain productivity, protect the network from attack and conserve bandwidth? Here are a few:

  • Set limits – Tools such as web filtering and application control provide the ability to restrict access to online shopping sites and streaming video by time of day. Employers have the option to allow these activities during lunch or after hours while blocking them during the rest of the work day.
  • Manage that bandwidth – Another option is to restrict the amount of bandwidth allocated to streaming video. Less bandwidth for non-essential activities means more for those that are critical to the success of your business.
  • Inspect encrypted web traffic – The use of secure sockets layer (SSL) and transport layer security (TLS) to secure internet traffic continues to rise. To protect your network from attacks hidden in encrypted web traffic, make sure your firewall can decrypt and scan encrypted traffic for threats.

If you’d like to learn more about how to protect your network and preserve productivity and bandwidth during the holiday online shopping season and other events watch this free webcast. You can also find information on how SonicWall next-generation firewalls can help on our website.

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Inspect Everything, Protect Everything: Next Generation Firewalls for Network Segmentation Inspection

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Most of us would reach into a cookie jar full of delicious, just-out-of-the-oven, chocolate chip cookies without a care in the world, or any doubt that we should simply enjoy the euphoric chocolaty goodness.

But what about germs? Did everyone wash their hands before reaching into the jar? What soap did they use? How do you know if your delicious cookie hasn’t been infected? It’s not like you can force someone to stand guard with a bottle of hand sanitizer to ensure that everyone is disinfected before they reach their hand into the jar. Or can you?

Your network data is a lot like that jar of cookies. You want to ensure it is available for those trusted to be able to enjoy and use, and you want to keep it safe from infection. You also want to be able to see who else is reaching into your cookie jar, and make sure they aren’t eating all the cookies. You want to make sure you are protected from cookie thieves and other crumb snatchers.

The practice of architecting a network with different zones and segments based on usage, function, or location (for instance, configuring different network zones or VLANs for different uses such as isolating DMZ from LAN traffic) is nothing new. It has been a long standing cornerstone in any enterprise network. Over the years this segmentation theme has grown drastically in some enterprises, such that different hallways or floors of buildings are isolated on specific VLANs, or printers and servers are on different VLANs than end-user workstations. In some cases, there could be further segmenting of various WIFI networks, VoIP networks, or public accessible kiosks. In the Internet of Things model, everything needs to be connected, but, for controlling the connectivity, network segmentation is still a vastly favored and effective method.

However, there is a flaw to this mindset that many network admins and architects have overlooked, and that is the evolving security threat landscape. Most networks using forms of VLAN segmentation have deployed these VLANs on high-performance-core network switches to support the vast demand of connectivity and throughput performance. As such, the most common example one might see of this configuration is several VLANs combined with Layer 3 IP Interfaces built on the core switch. Once this is configured, it enables users to route directly over the switch from user networks to the server networks. While this is traditionally a very effective and standard approach to network communications, it has become an effective way for malware to communicate as well. In this approach, as there is typically no access control between the end-users and server segments, exploits, trojans, and malware can pass freely from zone to zone.

Consider the data as the cookies, and the server zone in which they sit as the cookie jar. You need to make sure every user that reaches their hand into that jar has used hand sanitizer to make sure they are not passing off any infections. You need to make sure the users reaching into that jar are who they say they are, and that they aren’t stealing your favorite cookie. You cannot rely on simple network access control or stateful packet inspection via access list on a core switch to protect your cookies. The threat landscape has evolved, and stateful rules that would permit file share access would also permit communications for the latest ransomware exploits. Don’t let the bad guys hold your cookies hostage.

By deploying the SonicWall Next-Gen Firewall with advanced Gateway Antivirus, Access Control, Application Inspection, Intrusion Prevention, and Advanced Persistent Threat Protection, in combination with a network architecture crafted for segmenting different network zones, you can successfully ensure that everyone’s hands have been disinfected. Keep your cookie jar clean from the latest botnets, exploits, intrusions, and malware. Read more on this topic with our “Executive Brief: Why you need network security segmentation to stop advance threats.”

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The “Aha” Moment. Say Yes to Security and Collaboration.

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In survey after survey, IT executives continue to say that security is one of the top challenges they face. No one has to tell us about the risks. The stories of data theft and breaches are in the media every day. We are intimidated by the rapidly changing threat environment. New malware is being written every day and some of it is being written using a variety of methods that defeat existing security technologies. And too often the way that we protect our organizations is to add a myriad of approaches, tools and solutions, creating a tremendous amount of complexity that becomes hard to understand let alone manage.

But if you dig down one level, what you find is that security concerns create a barrier to doing what IT really needs to do, which is implement cool new initiatives that move the business forward.

Everybody wants to be seen as a hero, the clever one who can take on challenges, solve problems and make an impact on the business. Unfortunately, the security concerns become the reason they can’t do it. At SonicWall Security, we are working to help out with the security equation.

What are the initiatives that organizations are trying to deploy? One of the biggest areas of opportunity comes from all of the innovation that is going on in the cloud. Moving your work to the cloud streamlines the ability of your workers to collaborate and share information in real time. Tools like Microsoft Office 365 and DropBox allow employees to collaborate in a way that is changing the workplace.

This really hit home for me a couple of weeks ago when my 11-year-old daughter was assigned a big project in her fifth grade class. She and her teammate needed to create a report and a presentation. The night before the project was due, I came into her bedroom and she had her iPod setup to FaceTime her partner. They were both working together on the report using Google Docs and on the presentation using Google Sheets. They were oblivious to me, so I watched for a few minutes as they talked through ideas, added and edited text and pictures, and generally created and fine tuned the deliverables.

For this project, there was no need for them to meet, or even call each other. Collaboration tools enabled the entire project. This was an “aha” moment for me, because I realized then and there that these kids were demonstrating the future of work. What they take for granted is sadly often not possible in the work environment for a variety of reasons, but I couldn’t stop thinking that security is a big stumbling block to achieving the productivity new collaboration tools offer.

So, what is on your IT wish list? Do you want to move your CRM to the cloud? Or streamline your customer service delivery, or give your team access to data analytics no matter where they are? Or are you looking to eliminate paper and go all digital? Whatever it is, don’t let security be a barrier. If you want to learn how to turn IT security into the Department of Yes, contact SonicWall Security.

Top Reasons to Update to SonicWall SonicOS 6.2.5 for Better Network Protection

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Like many people, I sometimes pass over or delay software updates, but this one was different. The new SonicOS6.2.5 adds so many critical new features and so much functionality that I updated my SonicWall TZ firewall the moment it was available.

The new SonicOS 6.2.5 also gave me a chance to make more sense out of my network. My wife works from home, so our network carries both business and personal traffic. SonicOS 6.2.5 adds support for SonicWall X-Series switches on the SonicWall TZ300, TZ400, TZ500 and TZ600 next-generation firewalls. So by replacing my old switch with a SonicWall X-Series switch, I now have a secure network that will allow me to expand as I add more technology. Plus, I am confident that both our home and business data is now protected with the same security engine that is used by governments, colleges, hospitals and banks.

Here are a few reasons this update makes sense for any small business:

  1. The TZ firewall does not slow my network down.
  2. I manage everything from the TZ firewall, including the switch and my SonicWall SonicPoint access points
  3. Protection, protection, protection. At the National Retail Federation show in January, I (accurately) predicted 2016 to be the year where businesses will be hit with ransomware attacks. One of the strengths of  SonicWall is how fast it protects me from all new malware (in this case, ransomware). I continue to make backups, but I feel confident that I will not get breached by this particularly insidious type of malware.

And here what is so exciting about this new release for the distributed enterprise:

  1. With GMS, you can centrally manage the entire network infrastructure of a single site (and all distributed remote sites) including firewalls, switches, wireless access points and WAN acceleration devices. Being able to see what is happening on your network and pushing consistent policies to all sites is a compelling reason to upgrade.
  2. Multiple enhancements for more efficient inspection of encrypted traffic (TLS/SSL) with easier troubleshooting, better scalability and enhanced ease of use. Encrypted traffic is on the rise (50% surge according to 2016 SonicWall Security Annual Threat Report). It’s time to up your game and avoid a costly compromise or denial of service.
  3. With SonicOS 6.2.5,  SonicWall firewalls have achieved the prestigious Department of Defense (DoD) certification based on stringent security requirements. If a product with a firmware version is qualified for use by DoD, then it’s a safe (pun-intended) reason to upgrade your products to 6.2.5 now.

There are also additional improvements that anticipate the dynamic malware business. In our recently published Threat Report, we noted a substantial rise in encrypted communication. This is great for your privacy, but it also gives criminals a very easy method to penetrate networks. Most firewalls either do not inspect encrypted sessions or have this feature turned off a big mistake! An easy way to bypass your network’s security is by sending encrypted malware. Encrypted malware is a reality, so be better prepared with this new OS release. With this new release, the improved user interface makes it easier to set up and manage, especially when it comes to excluding inspection on traffic (such as Google searches).

Building a secure network is something that everyone should insist on. With the new SonicOS features I am a little bit closer. The addition of X-Series switch support to the TZ line (and it is only the TZ300, TZ400, TZ500 and TZ600 products at this time), my network is easier to manage, less complex and more secure.

My friend, Sathya Thammanur, product manager for SonicWall TZs, talked in more detail about the new features of SonicOS 6.2.5 in his recent launch blog. If you are looking for more information his comments are a great place to start or you can download our whitepaper: The Distributed Enterprise and the SonicWall TZ – Building a Coordinated Security Perimeter. If you are ready to upgrade your network, give us a call to explain how security does not have to cost you a lot of money or give you a big headache. As the security officer of your small business, your home or your distributed enterprise, SonicWall has a solution to make your life easier.

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Chocolate and Network Security: A Match Made in Heaven

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I’ve just finished lunch and something is missing. It was a good lunch too: grilled cheese sandwich and lentil soup (a nod to the chilly, blustery Spring morning outside). I liked my lunch, but now I want a little”¦ I don’t know”¦ a little something. What I’d like, truth be told, is a little bit of chocolate. Maybe a small chunk of Ghirardelli’s mile, or whoa ““ how about a lovely Lindt Lindor truffle? Yes, that would be just the ticket, but alas”¦ there’s no chocolate in the house.

And what, you may ask, has this to do with Security?

Everything. I assure you. Everything.

Let’s say you’re a distributor of fine chocolates, candies, gourmet sauces and other foods for the discerning palette. Let’s say you’re business is expanding by leaps and bounds, and your IT infrastructure is increasingly at risk, as you get hit with various malware events. No one really thinks of the critical role that IT plays in under-girding the success of gourmet food, but as wholesale and retail provider, First Source, knew ““ without a sound and safe infrastructure, they were going to be in trouble. But not only did First Source need an updated security infrastructure to better protect against threats 24×7, they also needed this to happen while improving the speed and quality of its order processing.

As a chocolate craver, let me tell you, I’m so glad First Source put SonicWall Security’s mobile and network security solutions and gourmet food together.

Over a period of 18 months, First Source designed and deployed a company-wide SonicWall next-generation firewall solution “” including firewall appliances at each remote location “” to act as the gatekeepers for the First Source IT infrastructure.

And wouldn’t you know it – the SonicWall solution has not only boosted the company’s security, but having site-to-site SSL VPN access with load balancing and high-speed internet connections has allowed the company to increase efficiency and collaboration too (read what other benefits First Source experienced here >>)

In almost every industry, in almost every location a solid secure infrastructure under girds almost all aspects of our lives. Even my chocolate cravings”

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