Vendor Case Studies

GlobalCerts and Websense

Nearly every credit union and credit union service organization employ firewalls and other security technologies on the perimeter of their networks to protect their critical data from outsiders. Now many are turning to solutions that block and encrypt private data to protect sensitive information from leaving their networks. This new generation of information security solutions goes by various names, including extrusion prevention, active policy management, outbound content security, information leak detection and prevention, point-of-use security, content monitoring and control, data loss prevention, content filtering, and messaging security - and they are quickly becoming high priority projects for proactive credit unions.

One such organization, Financial Service Centers Cooperative, Inc. (FSCC), an international shared branching network owned and controlled directly by credit unions has taken the problem of information leaks head on. FSCC joined forces with two leading technology companies specializing in data protection, GlobalCerts and Websense, to enhance security measures on their network for participating credit unions.

Bonnie Kramer, Chief Operating Officer for FSCC, explains that “in these times of so many well publicized security breaches, we wanted to be sure that we were doing everything possible to protect our credit unions’ member data.” That is why they turned to GlobalCerts, a recognized leader in secure messaging and certificate management solutions, to handle their encryption needs. GlobalCerts uses a combination of digital signatures and message encryption to provide a comprehensive solution to the security issues that affect SMTP-based Internet e-mail.

Kramer recalls that “the GlobalCerts rollout went very smoothly for both our employees and IT Department.” Many credit unions would like to use encryption and understand the value of encrypting e-mails, but are concerned about implementation issues and day to day usage. According to Kramer, “it is extremely easy to encrypt e-mails. We just have to add a special phrase in the subject line. After that, the entire message and any attachments are automatically encrypted.” On the receiving end, it is equally as simple to decrypt. The recipient simply clicks on a link that takes them over to the GlobalCerts secure e-mail server and signs in – the whole process takes less than 30 seconds or so. Kramer confirms that “the GlobalCerts SecureMail Gateway solution made it easy for us to overcome the technical hurdles traditionally associated with complicated encryption solutions, and our credit union clients really appreciate the fact that our e-mails are encrypted.”

Encrypting communications proved to be instrumental in securing FSCC’s data. In order to automate this process for both administrators and end users, FSCC relied on the leading information leak prevention solution, Websense® Content Protection Suite. A critical piece of the total information security solution, Content Protection Suite enabled FSCC to discover the location of confidential information throughout the network, monitor its use across a number of communication protocols, then protect it by blocking non-compliant communications, but forwarding legitimate, sensitive communications to the GlobalCerts SecureMail Gateway for automatic encryption. “These two solutions work really well together,” says Kramer. “Websense made it easy for us to identify our critical information and set use policies around both the users and data.”

Kramer and her senior management team were very impressed with the depth of protection provided by Websense: “not only does it cover e-mail messages, but it also monitors printing and faxing as well.” FSCC has essentially “fingerprinted” the types of information and documents that can and cannot leave their offices. The system is very granular in its controls (e.g., some data can always be blocked, while other types of information will be automatically forwarded to a department head for approval before being transmitted). What’s more, it was easy to deploy and configure, requiring little technical overhead and administration.

Kramer reports that several of their credit union customers are using the GlobalCerts-Websense solution and that “they highly recommend it, as we do too because they are both cost effective and easy to deploy.” She points out that credit unions can not only protect themselves from data leakage, but could use them for handling loan documents. “E-mail encryption and secure communications open up a whole new world for avoiding costly paperwork and dealing with faxing and couriers,” says Kramer. She also says that credit unions could most likely save money on their insurance premiums by implementing GlobalCerts and Websense. Kramer concludes that “this is an excellent bundling of security products and more credit unions should strongly consider using them to bolster their security posture.”