CheckPoint Software > Case Studies > Community Newspaper Group Enhances Security with Check Point SandBlast Agent

Community Newspaper Group Enhances Security with Check Point SandBlast Agent

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Endpoint Security
Cybersecurity & Privacy - Malware Protection

Applicable Industries

National Security & Defense
Telecommunications

Use Cases

Supply Chain Visibility
Tamper Detection

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Community Newspaper Group (CNG) is a leading provider of local news to citizens throughout Western Australia. The group's seventeen regional newspapers and associated websites provide readers with the latest local news, sports, entertainment and more. More than 700,000 readers rely on their daily Community Newspaper Group content to stay informed about local news and events. In today’s fast-moving publishing world, readers expect near real-time information even at the local level. Advertising is still the primary revenue source for CNG, so any interruptions that could prevent timely rollout of physical or online editions translate to lost revenue and potentially dissatisfied clients.

The Challenge

Community Newspaper Group (CNG), a provider of local news throughout Western Australia, was facing challenges in securing their digital assets and end-user systems. With over 700,000 readers relying on their daily content, any downtime affecting the network or employees could lead to lost revenue and dissatisfied clients. The existing security solutions from Trend Micro and Microsoft were aging and lacked the visibility into threats that the IT team needed. The team had to navigate multiple dashboards to gather data from various areas of the network and piece together a picture of what was happening. The challenge was to find a solution that could provide better visibility and actionable data for fighting advanced threats on laptops and desktops, minimize security impact on users, and simplify and centralize threat monitoring, management, and reporting.

The Solution

CNG chose Check Point SandBlast Agent to protect the company’s desktop and laptop systems. SandBlast Agent uses a complete set of advanced endpoint protection technologies to secure CNG’s users from threats, regardless of whether they are connected within their corporate network or working remotely. The solution helps CNG detect and block attacks, including those that use social engineering techniques such as phishing to deliver malware. It also limits damage in case of infection, by blocking any command and control communications, preventing movement of sensitive information externally and restricting spread of the attack to other systems. The Threat Emulation capability within SandBlast Agent discovers malicious behavior, preventing infection by quickly inspecting files in a virtual sandbox. It also provides protection for various file types used to share information at CNG, including Microsoft Word and Excel and Adobe PDF.

Operational Impact

The implementation of Check Point SandBlast Agent has resulted in improved threat visibility and advanced endpoint protection for CNG. The solution's forensics capability gives the IT team a deeper understanding of security events by automatically generating an incident report when any abnormal activity is tracked on any of their systems. The report summary provides actionable attack information, enabling the team to respond quickly and remediate their systems in the case of a security event. The solution is completely integrated, allowing CNG to deploy SandBlast Agent to new endpoints, manage policies, access event logs and incident reports, and troubleshoot all through the SmartCenter dashboard. The SandBlast Agent has also had minimal impact on performance, analyzing all content in the cloud without interfering with the user’s experience.

Quantitative Benefit

Detected and blocked numerous advanced threats that previous solutions missed
Forensics capability provided full visibility to identify threats to enhance overall security posture
Maintained users’ productivity while providing increased security at the endpoint