Smurfit Kappa

OVERVIEW

Smurfit Kappa is one of the leading manufacturers of corrugated and solid board packaging. The organization employs roughly 38,000 people, providing business to about 30 countries around the world. In the Netherlands alone, Smurfit Kappa has 22 factories.

The approximately 380 organizations participating in the Smurfit Kappa Group produce most of its raw materials within its own paper mills. These organizations will process these materials, along with other Point-of-Sale material (POS), consumer packaging, and displays. Smurfit Kappa customers include leading organizations such as Unilever, The Greenery and Quick.

CHALLENGE

The IT Infrastructure division within Smurfit Kappa is responsible for all information technologies. Harvey Renfurm, Infrastructure Operations Manager, and his team adhere to the management of all servers and domains in the Active Directory of the Smurfit Kappa Group. All of which run in two data centers: one located in Amsterdam and the other in Nieuwegein.

In addition, the IT division at Smurfit Kappa is responsible for information security management and all incidents of spam, malware, and data theft and/or loss. Renfurm reports that his team, unfortunately, had been used to seeing an average of 350 incidents per week on the previous security solution. Regulating 350 security incidents a week is a challenge in itself. As a global company, Smurfit Kappa must also stay in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley laws and regulations (SOX). This imposes strict requirements to the storage of data.

“Because we need to store data offsite, we replicate it to the data center in Nieuwegein. This, for example, meets only one SOX requirement.“
— Harvey Renfurm, Infrastructure Operations Manager, Smurfit Kappa

The old solution, as Renfurm recalls, was high maintenance and a continuous burden to monitor. The need for a delegated admin in which IT managers could designate responsibilities to the solution itself was becoming more and more clear. This would greatly reduce the quantity of tasks for IT operations.

These “tasks” meant having to manage 56 email domains and 532 DNS servers throughout Europe, Russia, South America and Mexico. With little bandwidth, Renfurm ultimately realized that his organization needed to implement a new email security solution with centralized management and reporting capabilities in order to reduce productivity costs.

SOLUTION

After extensive research, Smurfit Kappa decided to run a pilot project with the Forcepoint platform.

“The pilot was so successful that we decided to opt for the full solution. We wanted one solution for proxy, content categorization and virus scanning. We now have a product for exactly that, along with advanced reporting capabilities and customizable categories. This kind of flexibility that we got from Forcepoint was not offered by our previous solution.”
— Renfurm

From a Proof of Concept point of view, Forcepoint Web and Email Security were best in class for Smurfit Kappa. The organization implemented four appliances: two in the data center in Amsterdam and two in the data center in Nieuwegein. However, this level of protection can easily be managed from one, single console; the Forcepoint solution is a highly flexible, hosted solution.

RESULTS

Immediately after deployment, Forcepoint proved to be the right choice. Smurfit Kappa is reaping the benefits of an easy to use Forcepoint platform and console while providing opportunities such as black and whitelists for individual users. Renfurm and his team have also noticed an exceptionally high amount of emails in quarantine facilities. These were messages containing unsafe or unauthorized content being placed in a safe, protected environment. The previous solution, according to Renfurm, was not blocking such emails.

“With Forcepoint, we have fulfilled our need for email protection so that our end users can now work safely in a highly secure email environment.”
— Renfurm

Furthermore, the Forcepoint solution for email security is able to operate in the cloud, offering the advantage of an extra layer of security and control.

“We think of the cloud feature as email being checked, first, at the door of our data centers. In this way, we can hold many threats on the footstep, outside of the door, before they even have a chance to enter.”
— Renfurm

Overall, Renfurm knows the solution works for his team and his organization. Forcepoint allows for flexibility without sacrificing control, productivity, or optimal protection:

“Forcepoint works very well and has increased both productivity and safety. The fact is we are now optimally protected against phishing attempts and hackers because of Forcepoint.”
— Renfurm

Smurfit Kappa has relied on Forcepoint security solutions since 2006.