Dhanush Infosol Pvt Ltd & Cyberoam conducted a seminar on “Advanced IT Security & Management”, keeping in view of social responsibility of today’s IT world and the event provided an insight on the latest form of security threats, but also on how to prevent them through a single window solution. Event focused on protecting the information in the form of data, not to be lost either intentionally or accidentally. Managing, monitoring and maintenance of IT infrastructure like desktops, laptops, servers, network devices and security devices remotely through AsIsT - IMS (Infrastructure Management Services) to keep the availability of the resources all the time was one more highlight of the seminar. AsIsT Service Product was launched in the event.

AsIsT – IMS Launch by Dhanush Infosol

Dhanush Infosol also formally launched it’s service brand for providing IMS services for Global Solutions called “AsIsT – an Infrastructure Managed Service” for all segments to proactively monitor, manage and, maintain their entire IT Infrastructure. This product was launched by Prof. KN Raja Rao, Principal, RVCE, Mr. Nagaraja, Management Consultant, and, Mr. Raju, Manager – IT, Natural Remedies, Dhanush’s elite clients for more than a decade.

 

About AsIsT

AsIsT is the Service Product from the house of Dhanush to provide IMS services to the SMEs, Retail Chain of Stores, Malls, Hospitals, Hospitality Industry, Infrastructure companies, Corporate Houses, MNCs, ITES companies and similar industries where the IT is Critical and Complex. AsIsT aims at assuring Uptime and Availability of the IT Infrastructure resources at all the times through an agreed stringent SLA. AsIsT Proactively Monitors IT Infrastrucutre unlike the traditional break fix model. AsIsT is there here to prove “Prevent & Prepare rather Repent & Repair”. Dhanush, an ITSM company follows ITIL processes to provide the services. AsIsT provides Asset Management, Change Management, License Management, Application Management, Patch Management, Vendor Management, 24x7 support, Help desk / Service desk, Reporting on IT Healthiness, Green computing etc.

Introduction speech

Mr. Anil Kumar TV, CEO, played an instrumental role in establishing an IT/ITES Services and Enterprise Solutions at Dhanush, introduced Dhanush to the audience by stating “Dhanush established in 1995 as a small Partnership Firm in a humble way from two people and today has grown up ITSM Global company through the AsIsT IMS services. Dhanush has grown up from typical sales and service firm to Single window Solutions company. Dhanush provides Basic IT Infrastructure, Networking, BMS, Project Management, Mailing Solutions, Enterprise solutions, Linux & Windows expertise to name few. Dhanush continuously strives hard in quest of new solutions which provide Value Addition to clients’ existing IT infrastructure and to address the clients’ challenges. Mr. Anil mentioned that Dhanush’s core strength is Relationship and the key success of Dhanush lies in 3Cs - Credibility, Comfortability and Consistency.

 

Mr. Sumit Satheesan, Head Presales – India & Saarc, Cyberoam Speech :

Mr. Sumit had a session on Unified Threat Management (UTM), a Gateway Level Security. UTM consists of Firewall, Gateway level Anti Virus, Gateway level Spam Control, VPN, Content Filtering, Multi link & Bandwidth management, Phishing and Pharming etc. Cyberoam UTM is a 2nd generation UTM and which has Identity based policy management with which Cyberoam has edge over other similar products. He stressed upon how internal threats are more prevalent. The data leakage is one of the major threat in the organization. It also could reach the wrong hands. Cyberoam takes care of data leakage through emails. It protects the user community against indiscriminate surfing like pornography, dating, violence, gambling, suicidal sites etc. Which also results in reduced productivity. Block the users from downloading the adult content, images, mp3s etc., which not only non productive to the organizations but also chokes the bandwidth by resulting in increased demand for bandwidth, which is still predominantly costly in India. Cyberoam protects the organizations against legal liabilities. It safeguards the organisastional internal information against phishing and pharming. Cyberoam provides plenty of reports on various parameters for better analysis of the IT Trends in the organization / institute. Mr. Sumit also thrown light on how the End Point Data Security is important. He shared some of the figures in terms of statistics on the loss of data and data devices. He explained the types of data leakage at desktop level in terms of removable storages devices, mail, P2P, Printing, FTP, intentional or unintentional internal data leakage. Though the average cost of the data loss is 202$ per record as per some reports, the cost of data can not be measurable and once the data is lost results in a great loss. Cyberoam EPDP provides mainly Data Protection & Encryption, Device Management, Application control and Asset Management. Fulfills regulatory and security needs, easy to use with clear ROI.

Customer Testimonial : Testimonial by Prof. K N Raja Rao, RV College of Engineering :

Prof. KN Raja Rao is the Principal of RV College of Engineering, one of the highly reputed Engineering Colleges of the country highlighted the strong bond between RV College of Engineering and Dhanush which is more than 6 years. Professor shared his experience of implementing the Cyberoam in their institution and how the institution is benefiting out of Cyberoam. They had five objectives before implementing Cyberoam – Protection against virus and related threats, blocking unhealthy web surfing, better network management without loosing bandwidth, protect against internal and external attacks and getting best possible support. He mentioned that they achieved all these five objectives with Dhanush and Cyberoam. Professor shared the implementation strategy and shared the statistics indicating how the Cyberoam helped the institution. They take periodic reports and analyse the internet usage.

Prof. K N Raja Rao also shared the Case Study of CAT Examination success in his campus, wherein not even a single student suffered during the recent CAT examinations in his campus. He briefed how the security provided to IT devices, bandwidth allotted for internet usage and co-ordinated as a team to see the success.

Customer Testimonial : Testimonial by Mr. Raju B Kuppelur, Natural Remedies

Mr. Raju is an MCA with over an experience of 13 years in the various IT domains mentioned that few of the major challenges in his organization was spam, phishing and malware. Mr. Raju shared the statistics of before and after implementation of the solution. Cyberoam gave remedy against missing mails, non availability of bandwidth, malicious sites were vulnerable to malware. System breakdown and resources un-awailability was day to day problem. The available bandwidth was insufficient. Overall, it results in business suffering. The users were unhappy. After the implementation of Cyberoam, spam is reduced to the greater extent, users and management were happy because of the virus free environment, no missing mails, no more application or system crashes, proper bandwidth management depends on the requirement, brought the discipline in the organization, implementation of policy management, satisfied users and control over web and internet. User identity is helped to a greater extent in terms of policy deployment, report generation, analysis etc. VPN helped in secure communication between the Head office and all it’s branch offices.

 

Panel discussion

The seminar was presided over by Mr. Bala Giridhar, VP, Wividus Operations – Wipro Technologies, who has more than 30 years of experience in the field of IT and was also the Chief Guest of the seminar. Mr. Naveen Kumar K R, CTO, Dhanush Infosol, an MBA Post Graduate specialized in Finance, is a Tech expert having quantum of knowledge in various Information Technology domains. Mr. Sumith Satheesan, Head Presales – India & Saarc, Cyberoam.

Discussion :

1.What are the Major IT Infrastructure Challenges an organization is facing? – Mr. Naveen, CTO, Dhanush

Making use of the IT support to achieve the Business Objectives is bigger challenge and it is not the availability of the technology or ideas alone. IT is a driving force and at the same time it is complex and heterogeneous too. Hiring, Training and Retaining the multiple domain experts and skilled resources is one of those challenges.

2.With your experience how SME segment can address these challenges. Are the SME challenges different from Enterprise? – Mr. Bala Giridhar, VP, Wipro

Basically the IT challenges remain same either it is a big enterprise or small enterprise except the size, scale of operations, business complexity and geographical spread. The main challenges can be categorized in to two parts namely Management of Infrastructure and Management of Information. Under the Management of the Infrastructure you need to make sure the IT resources are available only to the people who needs access to information, in particular to Network, Servers and End Points. In terms of Management of Information, you will have to look into Data Protection and Data Leakage both against internal and external threats. The solutions are BUDR, BCDR, Policy Implementation, Asset Management, Management of Operations, Gateway level security and IT Infrastructure Remote Management. Today, the Management of Infrastructure and Information can be Securely, Remotely and Centrally managed by a NOC. These services can be safely outsourced to an ITSM or IMS service companies. By doing so, organizations can achieve cost benefit, scalability, latest technological tools, secured access and multiple domain skillsets with a committed SLA.

3.Why is Gateway Level Security important to any organization or Institutions? – Mr. Sumith Satheesan, Cyberoam

Gateway level security protects the entire network. Gateway is one of the major entry for all the threats and it is utmost important to block all the threats like virus, Trojans, worms, spam, intrusions at the Gateway level itself. At the same time emphasis is on End Point also to protect the information and data at the desktop level. Having protection from the external devices like pen drives, usb devices etc. also cause the network havoc. It is, therefore, important to have both Gateway level and End Point level security to protect the network.

4.How do you differentiate between Traditional Break Fix Service Model and Transitional Infrastructure Management Service Model? – Naveen

Traditional break fix model is used once the damage happened. Whereas Transitional IMS model is pro-active in nature, which acts before the damage occurs to the system. An alert will be generated and sent across to the NOC for resolution. In the Traditional Break fix model the Engineer has to visit or present in the site. While the damage is already happened to the system needs adequate time to rectify. While in the Transitional IMS NOC which is equipped with Knowledgeable and Skilled Engineers who can pro actively understand the problem able to resolve using all the technical skills which is result oriented. In the Traditional break fix it needs multiple engineers with different skill set. It is required to handle multiple vendors. If there are many branches, then the no. of engineers and vendors will increase. Wherein in the IMS model, there is single window to address all these issues. This single window will be responsible starting from Responding till Resolution and Reporting. In IMS model, the client will transfer the difficulty of managing and maintaining complex and multiple domain risk to ITSM provider, unlike holding this risk on their own in the break fix model.

Mr. Bala Giridhar continued by stating that in today’s world the technology has developed so much that hardly any hardware breakdowns in the servers, desktops, networking devices or in the security devices and it requires replacement of those spares. The hardware breakdowns compare to earlier days has come down significantly. The hardware breakdowns are about 20% and the O.S. and software breakdowns are about 80%. Then what is the need of multiple engineers spread across the branches? The O.S. and software issues can be sorted out from a central NOC which provides service support to globally spread branches 24x7.

5.When IT Maintenance Outsourced, are the organisation’s data and infrastructure safe? – Mr. Bala Giridhar

In today’s world the foundation of the whole IT environment believes in communication between the devices. That is how the technology in the applications built today. Besides, there is certain degree of security which is built in the operating system. The Operating System and Application vendors have taken adequate protective measures. But, the client has to take care of the IT Infrastructure when setting up the infrastructure as per his need to connect multiple offices with the security devices which are available like Cyberoam etc. With this the base level Security is in place to protect the IT infrastructure and Information in the organization. Now, the organization should consider the Remote Infrastructure Management Tools. Which works typically on the basis of Manager, which is maintained centrally in the NOC place wherein the Monitoring & Management is done and the Agent tool which is installed in the Desktop, Laptop or a Server. The purpose of this Agent is to have a secure communication with available resources and connection in place. The responsibility of the Agent is to carry the Health Information of the IT Infrastructure which is essential to communicate to the NOC and nothing beyond. Apparently, understanding the complexity and expensiveness to manage the devises onsite with physical skilled resources, all the latest Windows Operating versions are coming out with built-in features which aids Remote management and remote diagnosis. Obviously these operating systems make sure adequate amount of security. When the user give the control to the remote manager for diagnosing the problem in the desktop, the entire transaction happens through a session which the user can see on the screen and the logs on the activity happened are available. These are the safeguards which are there in the remote management services.

6.How does Internet Policy increases the Productivity and Secure organization or Institutions? – Mr. Sumith Satheesan, Cyberoam

As soon as content filter devices like Cyberoam is placed in the network the visit to unhealthy sites will be reduced and at the same time visits to productivity sites will increase. Just the awareness to the students or to the users that there is a monitoring device installed to keep track of the internet surfing, the unproductivity will be reduced and productivity will increase. Users stop surfing the sites which are not useful to the organization. The alerts generated on the user name also make the users not to use unhealthy web sites.

One more important factor is Bandwidth. Bandwidth is still a costly commodity in India. Earlier customer used to increase the bandwidth as and when the requirement comes and demands. Now, after installing Cyberoam, knowledge of bandwidth is available. As a proactive measure the client has to make use of the alerts, logs and reports for the ISP hardening to finetune and configure to suite the proper requirlements. Creating Centralised Policy will provide granular control wherein different user can be given different policy either by departmentwise or categorywise. So that everything need not be given to everyone.

 

Common Question

“Technology is expensive. Not implementing Technology is even more expensive.” Will you agree with this statement?

Mr. Naveen : Organisations from various verticals have the option of focusing either on their core business activities or on the IT service support activities. If the IT services are outsourced and if the organization focus on it’s core business, then it is not expensive. Otherwise, definitely it is expensive.

Mr. Bala Giridhar : If you consider the cost of loosing the data say for example 6 millions, then technology is not definitely not expensive and does not cost 6 millions. Compare the cost of doing and the cost of not doing.

Mr. Sumith : Unfortunately, whenever there is a business down or recession or cost cutting activity in the organization, the first hit is IT department. It has to be realized that the IT Infrastructure security and management has to be run parallel with the business management. Ultimately IT drives the business today and why to compromise with IT? The IT threats and solutions are like cat and mouse story. The moment there is a solution, new threat arises. That is why it is a continuous phenomena of focusing IT management and security.

In the beginning of the seminar Mr. Gopinath, Head – IMS, Dhanush Infosol had Welcome all to the event. The Cyberoam Block Buster movie was shown to the audience. The seminar was attended by major Education Institution Management, Professors, Manufacturing Companies, Corporate Management, SME sector, IT Managers, Techno-Commercial Managers, System Administrators from various parts of the Karnataka state as well as from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. And of course, the Media had attended the event and shown the support in taking Dhanush – Cyberoam solutions to the Social stream. At the end of the seminar, Mr. Subramanian, Head – System Integration, Dhanush Infosol made Vote of Thanks. The Dhanush Team witnessed the success of the seminar.