DFDS was established in 1866 when C.F. Tietgen created a merger of the largest Danish steamship shipping companies. Since then, DFDS has been engaged in national and international transport of freight and passengers in the North Sea, Europe, the Mediterranean – and from the 20th century also in the United States and South America.
A Symantec Service solution from Dubex gives DFDS an overview of their web traffic and the opportunity to differentiate between security policies and utilise their bandwidth for business-critical traffic.
DFDS helps goods and passengers from one destination to another. Reliability and high performance are key issues – including when it comes to network traffic. DFDS’ ships function as floating hotels, and this is where they experienced previous challenges in relation to network access for employees and passengers. DFDS needed a flexible and redundant solution that could meet different needs from ship to ship, ensure network access from all types of devices and make optimal use of the existing bandwidth.
“We needed to get control of our many licenses. We also wanted to outsource our hardware responsibilities and investments and establish a redundant solution that could ensure us high uptime. The solution was also to increase performance on our ships with a high security level for both passengers and crew. Dubex proposed a cloud solution from Symantec - and it works"
"The implementation has exceeded all expectations, and we are very happy with the solution. We’ve got efficient and central management of our ships, which has otherwise been difficult to achieve in relation to upgrades, etc. Now we manage the ships easily via the cloud, and it saves time and physical equipment.”
With a Symantec Cloud Service solution, DFDS gets an overview and control over all web traffic. They have invested large sums in satellite bandwidth, which they can now utilise better for their business-critical traffic.
“We have a constant overview of what our expensive bandwidth is being used for. We can put filters on and control what it may be used for, so we ensure work-related traffic. We suddenly saw how many of our users were actually infected with malware which our traditional defences failed to capture. Now we can block risky sites and minimise the risk of malware.”
DFDS has a large fleet of vessels with different purposes and needs. The Symantec solution ensures an appropriate setup in relation to the individual clients with different rights and restrictions. Jan Svane emphasises that it’s crucial for DFDS to be able to differentiate between their policies when needed, given that passenger ships need to be able to run viral marketing and make social media available to their guests, for example.
"This solution allows for the implementation of a nuanced IT security policy. Some users have the need and option to update software, download music and use Facebook, etc., while others do not have these needs. We can quickly detect and block inappropriate behaviour and see if clients are set up correctly. We are flooded with mobile devices on the ships, so it is crucial that the traffic is used for business-critical activities such as when customers book trips on the website”
“It’s crucial for our business that employees and customers have secure access to the Internet and receive the service they expect. It's easy to handle traffic with our new solution because it's managed from one central location instead of earlier where we used distributed solutions. We’re in favour of 'SmartSourcing' the things out in the cloud that would otherwise be very resource-intensive"
In addition to an overview of web traffic, DFDS also gets an overview of their costs in the form of a fixed monthly fee. Jan Svane explains:
“We can refrain from making further investments in bandwidth by making the best possible use of the existing one. With a fixed monthly payment, I don’t have to concentrate on boxes and upgrades, and I avoid having to invest in hardware every three to four years. Our finance department likes that, and I can better plan my activities.”
DFDS has gone from a distributed solution to a cloud solution, where they get a comprehensive overview of the traffic on their ships and offices in different countries. Jan Svane also makes use of Symantec’s uptime guarantee:
"I use the uptime guarantee on the various deliveries, so I can ensure a good customer experience." We’ve also defined two redundant VPN tunnels that we are testing. They are simple to configure, and troubleshooting and reporting are straightforward. They will help ensure redundancy in relation to web access should the primary VPN tunnel go down.”
From the outset, DFDS has had a permanent consultant from Dubex available to them, who helped them define the right solution and commission the final Symantec Cloud Service solution.
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