BACKGROUND

Koch Logistics is a provider of third party transportation, shipping and distribution logistics solutions involving trucking, air-freight, rail and sea shipping for its global clientele. Located in St. Paul, Minnesota, the company is a division of Minneapolis-based Koch Companies, a privately held, asset based, trucking, warehousing and leasing company.

THE LOGISTICS OF IMPROVED SECURITY

As a global provider of transportation logistics, information technology plays a key role in Koch Logistics’ ability to serve its clients. Every day the company passes high volumes of customer data internally and externally in order to ship and track materials worldwide for its clients. Protecting this sensitive information is of paramount concern to the company. Since it was incapable of viewing network activity at the application level with its current firewall, Koch Logistics grew increasingly concerned about its ability to successfully combat emerging Internet threats. The risk of damaging threats penetrating its network due to the unauthorized usage of Google Gmail and other webmail programs posed a major concern.

To ensure a proactive stance to security, Koch Logistics sought a firewall that could provide visibility and control down to the application level. “Our IT group is responsible for fending off spyware and other web-based threats that can infect our network users,” said Bruce Waslie, Senior Systems Engineer for Koch Logistics. “URL filtering alone was not solving this problem – we needed a firewall that enabled us to set policy and scan for threats all the way down to the application level.”

The company’s IT team was dissatisfied with the Linux-based firewall it currently had deployed, as well as with the customer support it was receiving from the vendor. The device’s application visibility and control was highly limited, allowing access to applications it should have denied. In fact, the company’s IT staff suspected several desktops were infected with spyware. The device was also blocking URLs that should have been approved.

TEST LEAVES KOCH IMPRESSED

Waslie began researching solutions available on the market and read about Palo Alto Networks online. Intrigued, he set up an on-site evaluation of the Palo Alto Networks PA-2000 Series next-generation firewall. During the evaluation, the PA-2000 Series identified several peer-to-peer (P2P) applications in use, and found spyware on a desktop that was redirecting the user’s browser.

“During testing it was abundantly clear that the PA-2000 Series would have blocked the spyware and P2P activity it unearthed,” said Waslie. Impressed, Koch Logistics purchased the PA-2000 Series next-generation firewall to minimize threats and gain visibility and control of Internet applications.

WHAT PALO ALTO NETWORKS DELIVERS: RESULTS

Since going live with Palo Alto Networks, Koch Logistics’ enhanced network visibility has allowed it to reduce its exposure to threats while asserting control down to the application level. In particular, Waslie likes how the PA-2000 Series enables him to allow or disallow users or groups. He is so pleased with the performance of the PA-2000 Series that he plans to demonstrate its capabilities to IT staff at the company’s other locations.

“We liked what we saw in the PA-2000 Series, and it only cost us two-thirds of what we would have paid to renew service with our existing firewall vendor,” added Waslie. “I’ve been extremely happy with the support people and the sales staff at Palo Alto Networks. Most importantly, now I am far more confident in our security posture.”