The corporate headquarters of MacKenzie-Childs
Ltd., in a pastoral estate on Cayuga Lake in central New York, include elaborate
design and production studios. Physical security is paramount for the workspace
of talented artisans creating unique pottery, furniture, linens, paper products
and glassware.
The Network Administrator at MacKenzie-Childs
knew that the 125 node network, protected only by “a Windows 95 PC running a
low-end proxy server with NAT capabilities,” was insecure. “Lacking the money to
upgrade the security," Mr. Warter explained, "I was forced to watch our proxy
server get hacked for months. Finally, the opportunity arose a few weeks ago to
finally secure our system." Mr. Warter didn't need an experienced grant writer
to secure funds for more robust security. All he needed were the proxy server
logs.
What tipped him off? "Over a 3 week period, I
watched as our dedicated 56K bandwidth drain away. We went from an average of
20% utilization to over 65% constant utilization." One day, after clearing the
proxy server, Mr. Warter watched as, without any traffic coming from within
MacKenzie-Childs’ private Local Area Network (LAN), the utilization of their
server and connection moved quickly to the 65-70% range. Though the logs of the
proxy were difficult to use, he noticed lots of packets with external source and
destination addresses running over the proxy server. Their proxy server was
burdened with someone else's data traffic. "Having proof that someone was
hacking our proxy server, I finally had ammunition to gain funding to implement
security." Based on his previous experience with firewalls, Mr. Warter "was
dreading the $10K+ bill for implementing security for our small network."
Eventually, Mr. Warter came across SonicWALL in an article in a networking
magazine.
After calling his distributor to get pricing,
Mr. Warter was "instantly skeptical about the product. Only $1600.00? MS Proxy
server would have cost about the same minus hardware, but still wasn't the
secure solution I was looking for." A router based firewall also wouldn't cut
it. Though it would only have cost $1,000 installed and configured, the
maintenance costs would have made such a solution quite expensive, "particularly
since the router is maintained by an outside vendor." Mr. Warter knew that if
SonicWALL didn't "live up to its hype," he could return it. So he ordered one
and gave it a try.
Two days later, when he received the
SonicWALL, Mr. Warter was once again doubtful that this "little blue box" could
protect his network. He plugged it in. "Within one half hour, I was back on the
Internet." He was amazed to see the SonicWALL logs confirm his suspicions about
his proxy server having been compromised by hackers. "After an hour of changing
the client configurations, I checked the log files. Over ONE HUNDRED entries of
hackers trying to get to our old SOCKS proxy." The next day, Saturday, Mr.
Warter received over 30 E-mailed logs from the SonicWALL. The SonicWALL log
filled up regularly because hacking attempts were so rampant.
Mr. Warter has been thoroughly pleased with
the SonicWALL MacKenzie-Childs installed in December, 1999: "Since, that
glorious day I installed the little blue box, I have yet to regret my decision.
I am so happy that I don't necessarily need to spend $10K-$20K to protect our
network from hackers. We now have a clean Internet connection. We have our
bandwidth back. And I can sleep at night knowing that my network is safe.”
To learn more about the
SonicWALL firewall and its components and features,
please visit our web site dedicated to SonicWall by clicking on the button
below.
