SurfControl helps African airline make most of scarce bandwidth

Johannesburg, 27 Jul 2005

A SurfControl e-mail and Web filter implementation for Kenyan Airways, the major airline serving East Africa, has had a huge impact on bandwidth savings.

James Munene, IT manager at Kenyan Airways, says: "The bandwidth savings have been calculated at approximately 30%. We`ve been able to give more people in the company access to the Internet without expanding our bandwidth, and we`ve virtually eliminated unproductive use of the Internet."

The flexible management SurfControl provided has also allowed Munene`s team to switch resources quickly to places where they`re needed. Kenyan Airways has international sales offices or agents in all the countries to which it flies, in addition to a network of travel and cargo agents within Kenya. All workstations have Internet access either directly through the Nairobi head office or over a corporate virtual private network.

"Internet access is an essential business tool nowadays," says Munene, "but there is potential for abuse. When staff spends time visiting sports, news and music sites, their productivity suffers."

There are direct costs as well: "Bandwidth is very expensive here, and limited," says Munene. "When everyone is using the network, especially if they`re visiting multimedia sites that chews our bandwidth. It`s expensive as well as unproductive."

Uncontrolled downloads also expose Kenya Airways to the threat of malicious software and viruses.

Having considered a number of Internet monitoring and filtering tools, Munene`s team decided SurfControl e-mail and Web filter products offered the best fit with their needs, as well as the best value. It was particularly important, says Munene, to get a product that enabled control of both Web surfing and e-mail in a single package.

"Kenya Airways took a stand at a recent big exhibition in Nairobi to publicise our online booking services, which is new to most people in Kenya. For this demonstration it was important that the online booking worked fast and smoothly - it had to be a best-case scenario. We used SurfControl to block all other Internet access temporarily so we could optimise the bandwidth to the exhibition site; it worked perfectly."

Given Kenya`s high bandwidth costs, says Munene, SurfControl "probably paid for itself in two months. It`s a great product."

Networks Unlimited

Networks Unlimited provides product solutions in the areas where efficient networking communications is the key to success. Our solutions are focused on providing tangible results to our clients through network management, productivity and security solutions. For further information and news on Networks Unlimited, please visit www.nu.co.za.

SurfControl

SurfControl plc (LSE: SRF) is a world leading Internet security company delivering multiple layers of threat protection to shield organisations from known, emerging and customer-specific Internet threats. The company has redefined traditional "filtering" by offering a unified Enterprise Protection Suite that continuously filters inbound and outbound Internet traffic to eliminate spam, spyware and phishing attacks, as well as Web and e-mail abuse.

SurfControl provides an Adaptive Threat Intelligence service from its Global Threat Experts to respond quickly with automatic, proactive security updates to protect customers. Customers avoid significant business downtime that impacts productivity and the bottom line while limiting legal liability and enforcing regulatory compliance and confidentiality.

SurfControl has more than 20 000 enterprise customers worldwide, and employs more than 500 people in 14 global offices. For further information and news on SurfControl, please visit www.surfcontrol.com.

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