Alpeco

CASE STUDY: Alpeco Limited is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of liquid handling equipment to the road tanker and industrial petrochemical industry. The company has over 25 years experience of identifying and meeting the needs of this complex and ever-changing market place. Alpeco operates by taking ‘best of breed’ products from world-leading suppliers, and packages them together with products that it manufactures itself. This ensures its customers get optimal solution for their specific requirements.

Burgeoning requirements

Having started out many years ago with just one PC and a rudimentary accounting system, the company found itself out of its depth on the IT front once its business grew. In order to keep up with its ever-expanding operations, it suddenly needed an integrated accounts system and a network supported by a central server.

Lasting relationship

Having looked at several different IT suppliers, Alpeco appointed local company Boffins. And it clearly made the right choice because more than a decade later Boffins is still providing the group with IT support and hosting its server. “For as long as I can remember Boffins has taken care of all our IT requirements,” says Alpeco Managing Director Stephen Penn. “We have a very good relationship with them. We know all the staff there - in fact, many have been there helping us from the start. So everything works very well and they consistently demonstrate a real empathy for how our business runs and our particular requirements.”

Just a phone call away

Stephen says that Boffins ensures Alpeco’s IT system runs like clockwork. They come into the office once a month to check everything over, carry out upgrades and make sure the group’s IT needs are being adequately met. On the rare occasions that problem s occur, support is carried out remotely, where possible. But if required, Boffins can be on site in less than two hours. “Ninety-nine per cent of the time we don’t need them because everything runs so smoothly,” says Stephen. “But in that one per cent situation that you do need them, they are there. It’s just a case of picking up the phone. There have been a couple of occasions over the years where we have had urgent problems and each time Boffins was here within half an hour.”

Cost-efficiencies

Boffins recently helped Alpeco with its move to Aylesbury, installing and supporting a new phone and server system, while keeping things as cost-effective as possible by maintaining existing hardware.

Final verdict

“Having used Boffins for all this time, I would, of course, recommend them to any company,” says Stephen. “The peace of mind that we get from knowing they are taking care of our IT needs is invaluable.”

Building Block 2

Product Aplication
Boffins Building Blocks to a 21st Century Business – Block 2

If establishing a first class link into the Internet is the first block in building your 21st Century Business, then protecting your network with a suitable firewall is the second. The Internet provides the backbone that will connect your people to Customers, suppliers, managers and staff, in the office, on the road, at home, and abroad.

The Internet is a major resource for research, marketing, entertainment, and social networking. Whereas research and marketing are positive things for you business, the latter can be big time wasters for your staff. Unfortunately the Internet is also where all the bad guys hang out and you can be sure they will be trying to attack your private network and disrupt your business through that same connection!

We all know that a firewall is a must have, but there are many types offering varying degrees of protection, sometimes with an impact on cost and utility. What are the key features?

Network Address Translation and Port Blocking

Communication with other devices on the Internet requires that each end knows the address of the other. The first important feature of the firewall is to ‘hide’ your computers by presenting itself as the only end point in your organisation. In its simplest form this means that communication can only be initiated by computers within your network disallowing unsolicited communication from the outside. The firewall keeps track of each open channel in order to route the traffic correctly.

Some inbound communication is however necessary e.g. incoming email. The firewall will therefore open a port and forward incoming traffic to the appropriate point in your network e.g. port 25 to your email server. It will block everything else that is not specified in this way.

Stateful Inspection of IP Packets

Previously this was enough to protect your network and many suppliers still ship routers and firewalls like this. Unfortunately these will no longer provide sufficient protection for your network. You can now be vulnerable on communications initiated from within your network by worms and viruses (or even unsuspecting users) and through the inbound channels which allow outsiders to connect to email and web servers.

The better firewalls now inspect each packet to establish whether the data being sent is consistent with its expected use, is in order, and well formed. This allows malicious traffic to be detected and blocked

Outbound Connection Filtering

Not all traffic initiated from inside your network should be allowed. Broadband bandwidth and volumes are always limited and often charged by usage. Peer-to-peer networking, social networking, music and video streaming, all use enormous quantities of both as well as wasting staff time. Policy based rules can allow or block such traffic by type, source, and destination, or by time of day e.g. if you wanted to allow certain activity during lunch but not otherwise.

Protection from Denial of Service Attack

Your connected network is not only under attack from SPAM (see later) but also many other forms of Denial of Service attack. Flooding of unsolicited traffic, of any kind, can overwhelm a firewall and effectively stop your valid communications from getting through. A firewall needs to be able to detect and reject these attacks effectively. The report below is not untypical!

 

Perimeter Protection from Viruses and Spam

As the firewall is located at the perimeter of your private network it can be used to prevent unwanted viruses and unsolicited mail from entering your network at all. As the firewall inspects every packet that passes through it can compare these to known threats using signature files downloaded every few minutes, reducing the threat to your systems and reducing the workload on those systems and users. Some firewall vendors offer
this service.

Virtual Private Networking

Another form of allowed traffic will be incoming connections from the Customers, suppliers, and staff that you expressly want to allow. This is typically done using encrypted tunnels providing secure networking between authorised endpoints and your private network, thereby extending your network out onto the Internet in a safe and controlled way - a VPN.

Being at the perimeter it is useful for the firewall to provide this authentication and encryption service. Better still when it can refer to your own Active Directory of users for password and authentication detail.

VPN’s can also be permanently established between offices using multiple VPN capable firewalls to allow easy and secure voice and data communication.

Wireless Networking and Guest Access

Placing your wireless access through your firewall ensures that laptop and guest access to your private network is controlled and authenticated. Many company networks are unnecessarily exposed to hackers through unprotected access points. This is a common vulnerability that can be easily closed by utilising the security features of a firewall.

Quality of Service Traffic Shaping

Finally your 21st Century firewall will be asked to carry and forward data of several types and prioritise accordingly. Voice and video traffic, for example, is significantly degraded by delays in transmission and you may wish to throttle non time critical traffic such as email. It is essential, therefore that your chosen firewall supports Quality of Service.

Conclusion

A comprehensive firewall is a fundamental building block in the 21st Century Business. It must protect the business from Internet borne threats and attacks, prevent inappropriate use of the Internet and unauthorised wireless access to business data, whilst allowing appropriate and authenticated incoming connections for voice, email, key business applications, and data sharing.

Boffins recommends the Checkpoint Safe@Office range of firewalls: Checkpoint is the largest firewall vendor with the most experience. The devices pack all of the features discussed above that facilitate the building of your 21st Century business. These features can be included on installation or added as and when required. The devices are reliable, easy to configure, upgrade, maintain, and manage, and provide a wealth of logs and reports.

Links to previous articles:
21st Century Business
http://news.boffins.co.uk/product-information/21st-century-business/

Boffins Broadband
http://news.boffins.co.uk/product-information/boffins-broadband/

Newsletter August 2009

Newsletter

Dear Customer,

Swine flu delivers a wake-up call

None of us is quite sure whether swine flu could turn out to be as big as predicted. But the very fact that it may affect many of us, is enough for businesses small and large to consider the effect that a major disruption such as staff being laid up at home could have on business continuity. Already, many local businesses have approached Boffins seeking advice on how IT can be used to ensure the uninterrupted operation of their business.

In truth, the potential pandemic throws up some similar issues that could affect any business, if its premises were disrupted by fire, flood or any manner of other third party interventions. So, the question is, how prepared are you for the disruption that swine flu could cause?

At the very least, every business should have thought about the issues, and have a business continuity plan. By thinking about it now, and taking some simple actions, you will be much better placed to cope efficiently with any eventuality. The plan needs to start with the basics, even who keeps a spare set of door keys, and how data back-ups are accessed.

Today, establishing mobile working for staff is easier and cheaper than ever. It does take a little time, however, and so planning ahead is well worth while. The essential infrastructure that allows staff to work from home includes ensuring they have adequate IT hardware, setting up secure access via the internet to data held on company servers, and ensuring that they have a good broadband connection.

You’ll need to arrange for email systems to work seamlessly, wherever they are accessed, and that any other software remote staff will need is loaded on terminals and properly licenced. In addition, phone systems need to be configured so that call traffic can be efficiently forwarded.

Thankfully, the recently launched Boffins Building Blocks programme can easily assess your current level of preparedness, and provide a shopping list of items that need attending to, in order to ensure you are ready to survive not only a swine flu epidemic, but pretty much any other business disruption you can think of.
And, as a result – swine flu or no – you may well discover that you have laid the foundations for a more effective and efficient way of working in the future.

Jim White
Boffins Computer Workshops

---

Internet Explorer 8 – look before you leap

Right now, the upgrade may not be all good news, depending on the way you use the internet. There are a number of compatibility issues with websites, when you visit them using IE8. And, although there is an IE7 compatibility mode, this latest version may throw up other issues that could potentially cause problems with other software.

At Boffins, we’re already testing the new release extensively, and building a database of issues and workarounds - so give our technical team a call, and take our advice to avoid any problems when you upgrade.

---

Building Blocks to a 21st Century Business – Block 2

If establishing a first class link into the Internet is the first block in building your 21st Century Business then protecting your network with a suitable firewall is the second.

Read the latest datasheet in our Building Blocks to a 21st Century Business series at:
http://news.boffins.co.uk/product-information/building-block-2/

    

---

Your feedback is important!

Please spare 5 minutes because we’d love to hear what you think about our monthly newsletters. Just visit the link below, answer the 6 short questions, and we may be able to offer you some complimentary consultancy.

Thank You!

http://fs19.formsite.com/boffins/form072213545/index.html

---

Another happy customer

“Having used Boffins for all this time, I would, of course, recommend them to any company. The peace of mind that we get from knowing they are taking care of our IT needs is invaluable.”

Stephen Penn
Managing Director
Alpeco

Read the full case study at:
http://news.boffins.co.uk/case-studies/alpeco/