A company’s efficiency now depends largely on managing these difficulties. Of course, there are firms that have taken pro-active measures to save their businesses from collapsing. They quickly change their business strategies, identify cost-effective measures and switch to solutions that yield quick returns on investment.

 

Information and communications technology solution providers are facing tough challenges, too. Apart from the need to maintain a decent growth record, they are creating solutions that suit their clients’ new demands. There has been strong demand for highly scalable and efficient solutions, whether it is in IT maintenance sector or applications sector.

In a series of interviews, TMCnet has set out how companies are tackling the challenges affecting their industries and how they help their clients navigate this economy by providing tailor-made solutions.

 

TMCnet recently caught up with Shaul Efraim, vice president of products, marketing and business development at Tufin Technologies, a firewall operations management solutions provider, to talk about some of the strategies adopted by the company to deal with the recession.

Our exchange follows.

 

 

Shaul Efraim (pictured left): Tufin’s firewall operations management solutions have already been adopted and implemented at major worldwide financial institutions. Now, with the current economic slowdown, our customers are able to reap the benefits of using Tufin’s SecureTrack in terms of major cost savings and improved efficiency. 

 

 

SE: While financial institutions have traditionally been one of our primary target audiences, our corporate strategy over the last couple of years has also included the development of a strong customer base (currently over 215 customers) in the telecom, transportation, energy and pharmaceutical sectors and we’ve also recently expanded our activity throughout the governmental sector (have been awarded a GSA (News - Alert) schedule contract). We continue to focus on large organizations regardless of industry where ensuring network security and compliance is critical.

 

 

SE: In the wake of financial turmoil we’re seeing two new severe problems faced by our customers.

 

First, large organizations are now being scrutinized even closer than before to remove all doubt of corporate fraud. Now more than ever, companies have to secure their critical data and ensure the integrity of their networks. However, at the same time, they are also required to downsize operations and demonstrate significant cost reductions. This poses a major challenge and actually our products can really help benefit during these challenging times by making teams more efficient.

 

Also, large mergers and acquisitions are increasingly commonplace. Mergers of any size can become a logistical nightmare for IT departments trying to ensure network security and protect company assets. Managing firewall operations is already a complex task so adding hundreds, often thousands, of employees at one time becomes an extremely time-consuming task that can overwhelm even the best firewall experts. Merging with another company also usually involves taking over responsibility for firewalls that you know nothing about – from configuration settings to different infrastructure vendors and management tools.  

 

 

SE: The utilization of SecureTrack can help Tufin’s customers mitigate the two problems outlined above.

 

SecureTrack helps prevent firewall misconfiguration and eliminate security holes thus enhancing network security. In addition, through SecureTrack, compliance with the most stringent regulations can be easily demonstrated. Tufin’s customers can do all that while also realizing significant cost reductions in four areas: reduction in time spent by the firewall administration teams by automating daily and other periodical tasks; reduction in downtime and service interruptions due to configuration errors; reduction in security risks and business continuity incidents; and performance optimization.

 

In regards to mergers and acquisitions – it can be managed and simplified by using automated tools such as Tufin’s SecureTrack and SecureChange Workflow. To ease the transition and make the process as secure and effective as possible, we offer the following advice to ensure networks remain secure during this critical time: collect baseline audit reports that assess the health of the acquired firewalls; streamline and cleanup the acquired rule bases; perform comprehensive risk analysis; ensure ongoing corporate security compliance by alerting security officers to violations; implement ongoing change tracking and monitoring.

 

We also help companies extend their current tracking and reporting system to include the new firewalls and monitor them as an integral part of the security infrastructure, and analyze the connection between the old and new networks to make sure that the connections are secure.