HDRC puts antivirus software to work

SECURITY|

Human Resources Department Canada (HRDC) is responding to the higher security risks that come with more Canadians accessing its services online by deploying a McAfee anti-virus suite.

Network Associates Inc. says that, together with partner Sensible Security Solutions, it is deploying 40,000 seats of its anti-virus and security solutions throughout HRDC's network.

The Active Virus Defense Suite will be HRDC's weapon of choice at the desktop, file server and groupware server levels.

Vice-president and Canadian general manager of Network Associates Jack Sebbag says the company has been working with HRDC for more than four years.

In fact, the government department had been using components of the anti-virus software already and simply decided to upgrade to the full-scale solution.

Management and efficiency issues were the main reasons for the upgrade, says Bob Charleau, HRDC acting director general of ITC operations.

"We use many different vendors for tracking viruses, so the more tools that you have, the more support that is required for training and understanding those tools," he says.

"So we wanted a department-wide, or enterprise-wide solution."

IT has complete control

Charleau says his organization was also attracted to the McAfee solution because its ePolicy Orchestrator management console gives the IT department complete control over the software. In an organization which has tens of thousands users connected to the network, it's good to know that an unhappy user can't disable the software and leave everyone else vulnerable, he says.

If someone doesn't like the fact that their machine is running slower because of anti-virus software scanning all the files and they try to disable it, the ePolicy Orchestrator will just turn it back on, Sebbag said.

It will also pick up on any new devices installed without the proper anti-virus software.

HRDC was impressed with the way the solution handles a new security threat, Charleau says.

Sebbag explains that when a virus outbreak is identified, a DAT file is made available to the organization and can be pushed out automatically to all desktops on the network.

In the case of a network the size of HRDC's, the whole process takes less than two hours.

This represents a considerable improvement, Charleau said.

"We basically had to go from desk to desk when a new virus came down," he says.

"You can imagine how time-consuming that is."

To prevent HRDC employees from unwittingly e-mailing or bringing viruses from home on diskettes, the software will be accessible to them for home use.

-ITBusiness.ca

Copyright Plesman Publications Ltd. Mar 2003
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