Eugene CunninghamIT TechnicianBanbridgehttp://www.banbridge.com/
Banbridge District Council is one of twenty-six local councils in Northern Ireland. Formed in 1973, the District covers approximately 180 square miles and stretches from Dromore in the north to Rathfriland in the south and from Gilford in the west to Ballyward in the east. It has a population of 43,800, which represents 2.6% of the population of Northern Ireland. Banbridge District Council's network is looked after by IT personnel Eugene Cunningham and Denver Gilpin, and comprises 200 users on Windows PCs, access to the Internet is via the council's 10MB Full Duplex connection.
Banbridge Council has 200 users on Windows PCs. Authentication is Microsoft Active Directory.
Banbridge Council needed an 'all-in-one' software solution that would allow them to centralize control of their VPNs to remote sites, alongside proxy and firewall security functions.
As an early Smoothwall customer they initially purchased Corporate Server. When the time came for renewal, the Council had originally planned to switch providers but upon evaluating the subsequent version, Corporate Firewall, they were impressed with features and decided to simply upgrade.
Banbridge Council has now been using Smoothwall for over 4 years, and says during this time the firewall, VPN and web filtering functions have all performed exactly as required. With the advent of Web 2.0 and in particular, social networking sites, the web filtering functions became particularly valuable. When the council realized that some of their employees had been making inappropriate comments on such sites, logs from SmoothGuardian (add on web filtering module) helped them to identify and produce evidence against the staff members involved so they could be disciplined accordingly. Eugene says the solution has proved to be robust and reliable, and has plenty of positive things to say about the standard of service he has received.
Smoothwall has enabled us to effectively control web filtering, monitor internet usage and protect against attacks. The VPN features also allow remote sites to interconnect quickly and easily to the core network.
The service and support from Smoothwall has been excellent. In the four years that we have been customers, the only problems we ever encountered were during the migration from Corporate Server to Corporate Firewall. As I recall, all issues were resolved quickly and to our complete satisfaction
Banbridge Council's AUP states that sites like Facebook should not be accessed at work. Smoothwall's web filtering controls help us to enforce this policy
One of the reasons we liked Smoothwall was because it was based on Linux, which as a platform we see as more secure and less prone to attacks
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