Liberty International, which manages out of town shopping
centres, is rolling out detection software to secure its internal
IT systems from security breaches by
employees.
Liberty plans to roll out Iconium's ESP software to secure 400
Windows workstations and 75 servers linked across nine shopping
centres on a wide area network.
The company said the project would raise security levels in the
shopping centres to the same levels as its central London
datacentre and free up staff for more productive work.
Ian McDonald, Liberty's network and operations manager, said, "We
manage nine shopping centres which are distributed across the UK.
We do not have an on-site technical presence. With all the will in
the world you cannot manage these sites as actively as you can the
site you sit in. This deployment will allow us to see any issues
and act on them."
A six-month trial by the company showed that the software freed up
staff time and identified issues that would otherwise be lost among
thousands of events recorded in systems logs.
The software detects unusual activities, such as changes to
critical files, virus activity, server restarts or administrator
log-ons, and alerts operators of potential breaches using a traffic
light system.
The company has been able to use the technology to monitor the
progress of system changes. For example, it can detect whether
back-ups have been completed successfully.
Liberty said it will be renting the software, rather than buying it
to give the company more flexibility should it decide to change
supplier or invest in different technology in the future.
The software, which has already been rolled out to servers and
laptops, will be rolled out to desktops this year.
The company took a fresh look at its perimeter security in
September, switching from Nokia to Checkpoint firewalls. It plans
to add further security by partitioning its networks into secure
zones using internal firewalls.