Cosway (M) Sdn. Bhd.

Industry: Retail

Location: Malaysia

Products Used: Cloud Email Security

Cosway Eliminates Spam and Malware With Websense® Hosted Email Security

Cosway (M) Sdn. Bhd. is one of Malaysia’s longest established network marketing companies. Established in 1979, Cosway distributes a wide range of exclusive, quality consumer products at highly competitive prices through a unique “Network Marketing” system. The company retails multi-brand consumer durables, ranging from household, beauty, health care and car care products to audiovisual home entertainment, as well as children’s education learning aid products.

As one of Asia’s largest network marketing companies, Cosway operates hundreds of Stockist Centres with its workforce extending across Malaysia.

The Problem

With such a highly distributed network of users, email communication is an essential and heavily used business tool. As a result, Cosway’s IT department faced the immense task of filtering emails on a daily basis. While the company prohibited illegal content from reaching the network, it did not want to be too restrictive or hamper communication. To add to its problems, spam emails and virus attacks were becoming a major problem.

“Since managing email security solutions was not part of our core duties, we seek alternative solutions that would ease the burden on our IT administrators,” says W.H. Lee, of the Group Information System department of Cosway Malaysia.

Today’s Web and email threats are more invasive, abundant, and unpredictable than ever. Attack volumes and complexity are surging to new heights. Lee explained how recent virus threats also added to the strain on resources. Given the damage that viruses and malware can potentially cause, Cosway needed real-time protection in place, and a solution that would not incur an administrative burden. The obvious choice was for Cosway to consider outsourcing this vital IT service to a reliable partner.

The Solution

After rigorous deliberation and comparisons, Cosway opted for Websense^® Hosted Email Security. The reason was clear and compelling: Websense Hosted Email Security provided protection at the Internet level, eliminating threats such as spam and malware before they could reach Cosway’s network. It also assured protection against messaging threats such as malware, spam, phishing, and inappropriate content.

Through the use of Websense Hosted Email Security, Cosway has been able to eliminate the risks and uncertainty of managing an in-house security solution themselves, thus providing the highest possible degree of protection and removing the necessity for additional hardware and software devices. As a result, predictable service costs remain constant as there are no surprise maintenance fees or upgrade requirements. This bodes well at a time when most organisations are cutting costs, and Websense proved to be a practical investment by Cosway.

“Our objective in selecting Websense Hosted Email Security was to free up our hardware, software, and human resources for activities which are core to the company’s business,” says Lee. “At the same time, we want to keep full control and visibility into the content analysis, through a secure Web-based real-time portal without having to maintain a system on premise.” “The Websense hosted model provided centralised security with built-in redundancy, failover, and business continuity, while easing administration and optimising network operating and capacity planning costs,” added Lee.

The Results

Since the implementation of the Websense solution, Cosway has experienced significant improvements in its security management. Total cost of ownership was lowered by eliminating the administrative overhead and associative costs of maintaining a product on-site. Consequently, this allowed IT administrators more time on their hands to deal with other duties and job requirements.

Cosway Malaysia is certainly impressed with Websense Hosted Email Security solution where Lee finds the solution “is flexible, customizable and comes with SLA commitment”. Cosway has since managed to reduce administration time to a negligible level.

“Even though Websense is a hosted service, the solution was customized according to our needs and requirements. At Cosway Malaysia, we are able to filter content based on our email security policy and have complete control over corporate email guidelines to increase security and reduce legal liability,” continued Lee.

Looking to the future, Cosway plans to consider other solutions such as Websense Web Security to further assist in their overall security operations. The convergence of Web and email attacks means that it’s now more important than ever to choose a security vendor like Websense, who utilises combined intelligence to protect against Web, email, and data security threats.

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