Kaspersky Hosted Email Security Protects Russia’s Largest Department Store

For many companies today, IT security is a matter of survival. If mission-critical information falls into the hands of cyber criminals or is destroyed, a company’s business processes can collapse. The security of its IT infrastructure is, moreover, extremely important for an organization’s reputation. Email traffic must be free from malicious content – otherwise who would want to engage in business correspondence with the company? This issue is a particularly important one for a globally-renowned organization like Moscow’s GUM department store.

The Challenge

The GUM department store – Russia’s largest – has been one of Moscow and Russia’s major attractions since the Soviet. The huge building on Red Square looks more like a palace than a shopping centre and is a must-see destination on any tour of Russia’s capital. GUM doesn’t, however, appeal only to tourists – the store also draws crowds of locals. GUM offers an exceedingly wide range of merchandise and serves thousands of customers a day. For an organization of this magnitude, a smoothly-functioning and extensive IT infrastructure is indispensable and must be reliably protected against IT threats of all kinds.

Until recently, GUM’s email system was being placed under increasing strain by unsolicited bulk email. Many of these spam messages contained malicious code, which posed a threat to the organisation’s entire IT infrastructure. Consequently, the company’s IT experts were forced to invest more and more time and effort into protecting the company’s network.

The Solution

GUM’s IT department, which is headed by Dmitry Popov, made the initial decision to entrust the protection of the company’s email traffic to an outsourced IT security service. After evaluating the features and quality of the various solutions on the market, GUM’s experts selected the Kaspersky Hosted Email Security service from Kaspersky Lab.

The Kaspersky Hosted Email Security service provides comprehensive protection for email traffic against all email-distributed IT threats. It protects electronic mail within corporate networks and dramatically reduces the cost of implementing and maintaining IT security systems. The service is based on outsourced antivirus and anti-spam scanning for email traffic.

All email traffic is screened on Kaspersky Lab’s servers, and customers receive their messages free from spam, malicious code and other undesirable content. The company’s email traffic receives optimum protection, as the Kaspersky Lab servers use the latest software versions and databases to perform the screening processes.

Conclusion

The GUM IT department’s decision enabled the organization’s email traffic to be secured without purchasing and implementing new hardware or software. Moreover, the use of the Kaspersky Hosted Email Security service has considerably reduced the load on GUM’s IT experts, who were previously forced to spend a large part of their working hours protecting their network against IT threats.

“Before we decided to take advantage of the services provided by Kaspersky Lab, our company’s incoming email comprised 90% spam. This made email correspondence extremely difficult and wasted valuable employee time,” says Dmitry Popov. “Entrusting the scanning of our email traffic to the specialists from Kaspersky Lab has enabled us to simultaneously resolve two important issues. It has, firstly, meant that the burden on our servers has been considerably reduced and, secondly, that our IT experts now have more time to focus on their core duties.”

“The constantly increasing flood of ‘junk mail’ and the increasingly sophisticated methods used by cybercriminals make appropriate counter-measures essential. We are extremely pleased that the experts at GUM have chosen the Kaspersky Hosted Email Security service to protect their email servers. The service increases the efficiency of IT personnel and ensures that corporations’ email traffic is protected against malicious programs at the highest level,” says Andrey Nikishin, Director of Kaspersky Lab’s IT Security Outsourcing Services.

Further information on Kaspersky’s Hosted Security Services, plus a free 30-day trial subscription offer, can be found at www.kaspersky.com/hosted_security.