Customer suCCess

Fratelli Branca Distillerie s.r.l World-class security management for a 160 Years-old Distillery in Italy

Fratelli Branca Distillerie s.r.l (which is controlled by Branca International S.p.A) manufactures the celebrated drink bitters Fernet Branca, and the Italian distill-ery has remained under the ownership of the Branca family since it was founded more than 160 years ago in Milan. The notion of stability and security extends to the company’s information technology. Thanks to a wide-scale, integrated implementation of Symantec security solutions, Fratelli Branca Distillerie is blocking spam email, protecting endpoints from threats, and monitoring and responding to security events. It’s boosting efficiency too: since introducing the security management solution, the distillery has saved the equivalent of 1.5 days per month in physical security monitoring.

universally popular Italian beverages

Fratelli Branca Distillerie S.r.l. is a well-established Italian company operating in the spirits sector. The company, which was founded over 164 years ago in Milan, has always been controlled and headed by the Branca family, now at the fifth generation. This entrepreneurial story began in 1845, when Bernardino Branca invented the bitter liqueur that would have become popular all over the world: Fernet-Branca

The popular alcoholic beverage, traditionally used as a digestif, was recently featured in the IWSR ‘Elite Brands List’, based on its global penetration and popularity. In recent years, the mix of product portfolio and strategic decisions taken by the present CEO Niccolò Branca allows the company to effectively compete in Italy and in 160 other countries, and extend its portfolio into brands that include Brancamenta, Punt&Mes, Stravecchio Branca, Caffe Borghetti, and Sam-buca Borghetti. Fratelli Branca Distillerie has sales of $111 million (2007). Security technology has traditionally been at the forefront of most people’s minds at Fratelli Branca Distillerie, with the overriding objective of curbing attacks before they reach the company’s perimeter. Several lines of defense are in place to counter these security threats. Symantec™ Endpoint Protection 11.0 is deployed to protect the company’s 20 HP/Dell servers and 80 endpoints (workstations, laptops, and mobile devices) from viruses and firewall attacks. For a medium size company like Fratelli

orGANIZAtIoN ProFILe

Website: www.branca.it

Industry: Consumer Goods

Headquarters: Milan, Italy

sYmANteC soLutIoN

Endpoint Security

Messaging Security

Security Management

Why symantec?

· Integrated portfolio of best-of-breed security solutions

· Excellent after-sales support from Symantec

· Symantec’s reputation in the security software market

Customer suCCess FrAteLLI BrANCA DIstILLerIe s.r.L

Branca Distillerie, where the IT resources are often stretched to the limit, the great advan-tage of using Symantec Endpoint Protection is that it brings together essential security technologies, such as antivirus, antispyware, firewall, intrusion protection, and more, in a single agent―and one pane of glass.

Protecting against zero-day threats and threats not seen before by the distillery, Symantec Endpoint Protection provides the Italian firm with proactive threat scanning and the detection and removal of rootkits―all against a backdrop of strong perfor-mance. From an IT management perspec-tive, that means ‘business as usual’ for the company’s operational servers, backup server, database, fax server, antivirus server, and optical archiving server―and about eighty PCs/laptops.

Almost totally eliminated spam

To minimize threats further, the distillery added Symantec™ Mail Security alongside Symantec Endpoint Protection to protect the firm from spam. It was found that up to 95 percent of the approximate 12,000 in-coming email messages Fratelli Branca Distillerie receives daily are spam and, in some cases, contain infected attachments. The solution enables the firm to filter inap-propriate content and block files based on true file type, while preventing inappropri-ate communications, Since being intro-duced, Symantec Mail Security has helped almost totally eliminate the risky and frus-trating spam phenomenon.

Improvements to the monitoring of servers most exposed to the Internet have also been achieved through the adoption of Symantec™ Critical System Protection. With this solu-tion, Fratelli Branca Distillerie enjoys pro-tection against day zero attacks and im-proves compl iance by enforc ing behavior-based security policies on the 80 clients and 20 servers. Like Symantec Endpoint Protection, Symantec Critical System Protection relies on a centralized management console, which the team use to configure and maintain their security policies, manage users and roles, view alerts, and run reports. “By activating cer-tain detection methods, Symantec Critical

System Protection makes it possible to re-cord events that would otherwise be difficult to identify, such as modifications to files,” explains Roberto Contessa.

Completing the suite of integrated security solutions is Symantec™ Security Information Manager, which is used to compile and ana-lyze log data, while also monitoring and re-sponding to security events. Roberto Con-tessa explains how it works. “To minimize the time required for analysis―and reduce costs―the logs generated by Symantec Mail Security, Symantec Endpoint Protection, and Symantec Critical System Protection

soLutIoN At A GLANCe

Business Drivers

• Ensure staff can work without being hin-dered by security issues

• Reduce the cost of supporting technology

symantec Products

• Symantec ™ Endpoint Protection

• Symantec™ Mail Security

• Symantec™ Critical System Protection

• Symantec™ Security Information Manager

• Future implementations:

• Altiris™ Client Management Suite

• Symantec Backup Exec™

technology environment

• Endpoints: 80

• Servers: 20 HP and Dell

• Operating Systems: Microsoft® Windows®

symantec Partner

• Project Informatica SpA

Business Value and technical Benefits

• Blocked 95% of daily email volume of 12,000 messages a day as spam

• Analyzes 15 million events every month, 20 of which are classified as potential threats

• Prevents security outbreaks

• Saves 1.5 days per month in physical secu-rity monitoring

• Automates security policy configuration and maintenance

“Symantec Critical System Protection

makes it possible to record events

that would otherwise be difficult to

identify, such as modifications to files.”

roberto Contessa

IT Manager

Fratelli Branca Distillerie S.r.l

Customer suCCess FrAteLLI BrANCA DIstILLerIe s.r.L

are all sent to Symantec Security Informa-tion Manager. This solution examines them in real time, analyzing correlations with the added help of information updated daily by Symantec, such as lists of potentially dan-gerous IP addresses or flaws in the security of current systems.

Protecting Fratelli Branca Distillerie from almost every type of security risk

In the case of Fratelli Branca Distillerie, Symantec Security Information Manager correlates the analysis of approximately 500,000 active directory events per day, highlighting on average twenty incidents for which a more detailed study must be carried out. “If you consider the number of events Symantec Security Information Manager analyzes, it would be impossible to under-take analysis of this kind manually. For that reason, the solution protects Fratelli Branca Distillerie from almost every type of secu-rity risk,” he adds.

During the development and implementa-tion of this world-class security infrastruc-ture, Fratelli Branca Distillerie was sup-ported closely by Project Informatica, a Symantec partner. “Project Informatica’s support to Fratelli Branca Distillerie was fundamental right from the start; initially as consultants to guide us in the choice of the most suitable security solution and later on in the implementation of the project,” says Roberto Contessa, “The company’s strong point is the quality of its after-sales service and assistance―both in terms of installa-tion and testing.”

Building on the success of this showcase security deployment, Fratelli Branca Distillerie is currently extending its relation-ship with Symantec into infrastructure op-erations and business continuity. Altiris™ Client Management Suite is now being rolled-out to enable the lifecycle integration of the firm’s IT assets; while Symantec Backup Exec™ will be used to deliver com-prehensive data protection for the Windows environment. “With Symantec alongside us, we can get on with managing the business, without worrying about security and busi-ness continuity issues,” Roberto Contessa concludes.

Copyright © 2009 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec logo, and Backup Exec are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. All product information is subject to change without notice. Part Number: 20033421

“If you consider the number of events

Symantec Security Information

Manager analyzes, it would be

impossible to undertake analysis

of this kind manually. For that

reason, the solution protects Fratelli

Branca Distillerie from almost

every kind of security risk.”

roberto Contessa

IT Manager

Fratelli Branca Distillerie S.r.l