Fintech, South Africa's largest independent financier providing financing for technology used in business, has announced it has implemented SystemSkan to control and manage its IT infrastructure.
SystemSkan is an internal security management system that is focused on policy enforcement by tracking and controlling all user activity on a computer network.
The solution provides the ability to view, record and restrict activities, including Internet, e-mail, instant messaging and application-specific activities.
The project was run in phases of which the first phase was a proof of concept that ran for two weeks. Thereafter, the full implementation of SystemSkan was completed, including staff training, in only two days. Additional staff training was done a few weeks later.
According to Fintech Head of IT, Graeme Ortlieb, the ability to track the movement of information is a key component of Fintech's requirements for good governance.
"Fintech is a financial services company that deals with sensitive information on a daily basis and Systemskan gives us the ability to track documents and the manner in which they are dealt with, whether printed, e-mailed or moved to new folders or portable storage devices."
SystemSkan is an internal security management system that is focused on policy enforcement by tracking and controlling all user activity on a computer network. It provides the ability to monitor, control and report on the activities of individuals or groups of users both reactively and proactively. Administrators have the ability to view, record and restrict individual activities, including document access, application usage, webmail, and Internet activities.
SystemSkan also includes network utilities such as remote control administration, messaging and task scheduling. It is a simple tool to enforce your IT policy, increase productivity and cut bandwidth costs.
"It also has an important internal productivity role to play as it is possible to analyse any users' computer usage. Its rule-based alerting and action engine allows us to proactively monitor events which we deem to be contrary to corporate policy or which we would like to be aware of for productivity reasons," he explains.
"Unlike basic monitoring products that only provide a report reactively once a security breach has occurred, SystemSkan also provides proactive security features. This proactive functionality prevents policy breaches before they occur by continually and automatically screening all activity, and can be configured to prevent inappropriate activities or lock users' PCs when the company's policy has been broken," adds J2 Software managing director John Mc Loughlin.
Ortlieb says SystemSkan provided the functionality and toolset we required at an affordable price. "SystemSkan has the ability to carry out hardware and software audits and it allows each manager to control his/her own staff productivity by putting the console in their control.
"J2 Software was a good fit as an implementation partner for this project as we were able to get a swift implementation project completed and focused attention on its ongoing use and improvement. Like any policy tool, it will be subject to ongoing changes in business policy, and with the ongoing help of J2 Software in reviewing our policies, we will be able to build a more robust policy enforcement system."
"J2 Software is really proud to welcome such a well-respected company into our customer family. The entire process was exceptionally well-handled and the staff at Fintech had a good understanding of their desired objectives throughout the different project phases. It has been our pleasure to provide Fintech the correct tool to effectively enforce its security policy and we look forward to many more years of successful collaboration. We will be of assistance wherever necessary to ensure Fintech gains maximum benefit from the SystemSkan solution. It is our goal to aid our clients in protecting their most important asset - their information," concludes Mc Loughlin.
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