CASE STUDY Industry: Utilities - Energy

SVENSKA KRAFTNÄT - SWEDISH NATIONAL GRID CASE STUDY

Svenska Kraftnät safeguards web and ensures communication security with Clearswift

www.skv.se

Svenska Kraftnät is the Swedish National Grid, a state utility that controls the entire electricity and natural gas power supply for the country.

Energy producers from surrounding countries load power onto the Swedish National Grid’s network, with energy suppliers then paying the Swedish National Grid to load onto their grids for them to sell-on to customers. Using Clearswift’s Email Appliance, and MIMEsweeper for SMTP means that the organisation has safe and resilient email helping them to meet their goal of providing a safe, robust, cost-effective and environmentally sound energy transmission system.

Challenges:The Swedish National Grid began using a spam filter back in 1996. They tried a couple of different products but found that neither was satisfactory and that the amount of spam received was increasing. Having secure email that is available at all times is a business imperative for the organisation as their main trading system, which communicates with SMTP protocol, is time critical. The trading system is the means by which the Swedish National Grid communicates with energy producers in countries such as Norway, Denmark and Finland. The system cannot tolerate any delay in email delivery as the information being passed is time sensitive.

The Swedish National Grid made the decision to move to a virtualized environment with VM Ware® in order to reduce IT costs and improve the availability and efficiency of resources and applications in their organization. They were keen to use this move to also introduce a superior integrated email solution that would improve their current security, work well in a virtualized environment and ultimately enhance virtualization’s operational benefits.

Solution sought and implementedWhen the Swedish National Grid realised that they needed better protection than their current solution was able to give them they turned to their IT Partner, HPS, for guidance regarding what was available. HPS helped them to test and review a number of solutions. Finding out that Clearswift were the first security vendor to offer a fully supported virtualized deployment of business critical email security made the decision an easy one to make.

Martin Wikström says, “It quickly became clear that Clearswift offered the best solution in the marketplace. Our evaluation showed that it is easy to manage, easy to route and easy to understand. Crucially it provides us with exactly the protection we need.”

“With responsibility for Sweden’s power supply we need a solution that ensures we have safe and efficient email. Using Clearswift solutions gives us the peace of mind that we have a truly secure environment. We got up and running fast and have been able to really maximise the benefits of virtualization...”Martin Wikström, Engineer at Svenska Kraftnät

CASE STUDY

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The trading system cannot tolerate any delay in email delivery as the information being passed is time sensitive.

The Clearswift Email Appliance 2.7 and Clearswift MIMEsweeper for SMTP 5.3.

Company: Svenska Kraftnät (Swedish National Grid)

Industries: Utilities - Energy

Customer url: www.skv.se

Domain: Virtualization

Solutions Employed:

Clearswift Email Appliance 2.7

Clearswift MIMEsweeper for SMTP 5.3

Virtual appliance licenses

““It quickly became clear that Clearswift offered the best solution in the marketplace. Our evaluation showed that it is easy to manage, easy to route and easy to understand. Crucially it provides us with exactly the protection we need...” Martin Wikström, Engineer at Svenska Kraftnät.

Contact SupportAPAC (+61) 2 9424 1210Japan 0800-400773Germany 0800 1800 556Europe (+44) 0118 903 8200US 1 856 359 2170Email support@clearswift.comOnline kb.clearswift.com

@ 2009 Clearswift Ltd. All rights reserved. The Clearswift logo and Clearswift product names are trademarks of Clearswift Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Clearswift Ltd. (registered number 3367495) is registered in Great Britain with registered offices at: 1310 Waterside, Arlington Business Park, Theale, Reading, Berkshire RG7 4SA England.

About ClearswiftClearswift simplifies content security. Our products help organizations enforce best-practice email and web use, ensuring all traffic complies with internal policy and external regulations. Our range of content filtering solutions makes it easy to deploy, manage and maintain no-compromise email and web security for both inbound and outbound traffic.Clearswift is the only vendor to offer comprehensive, policy-based content security in all three deployment methods: as software, as an appliance and as a mannaged service. All three platforms are designed to take the hassle out of securing internet traffic, with a clear, intuitive management interface;automatic, ‘zero-touch’ updates; powerful reporting and common-sense policy management.Twenty years of experience across 17,000 organizations has helped us raise security standards while simplifying security management at the same time. We’ve helped many of the world’s most successful organizations use the internet with confidence and are committed to staying ahead of the market and helping our customers defend against all emerging threats.

Company: Svenska Kraftnät (Swedish National Grid)

Industries: Utilities - Energy

Customer url: www.skv.se

Domain: Virtualization

Solutions Employed:

Clearswift Email Appliance 2.7

Clearswift MIMEsweeper for SMTP 5.3

Virtual appliance licenses

“Clearswift provides us with a first class solution. It is very stable which means that I don’t have to spend time doing things like a daily re-configuration of the system but can instead use my time more productively and with a 99.5% spam detection rate it is extremely reliable...” Martin Wikström, Engineer at Svenska Kraftnät.

Clearswift Ltd.1310 Waterside, Arlington Business Park, Theale, Reading, Berkshire RG7 4SA England.

Contact ClearswiftStandard support is available to any Clearswift customer (or during an evaluation) from 9am Monday to 5pm Friday.

Standard support • 24/5 Phone and Email Support• Knowledge Base Access• Service feeds to update your deployment• Service packs and patches

Business Benefits:Svenska Kraftnät found that Clearswifts Email Appliance enabled them to put in place intelligent email policies that allow the free exchange of information and critically do not delay the delivery time of emails. It has greatly reduced the amount of time they need to dedicate to resolving issues as it allows them to easily track down where a problem lies and why it has occurred. They have also seen an increase in efficiency as limited resource is needed to manage the solution. It has its own operating system so updates can be downloaded and the solution just gets on with it.

Svenska Kraftnät now has an email system that is highly effective and fully resilient. The anti-spam and anti-malware deal with any obvious network based threats, while the content-aware MIMEsweeper policy and content inspection engine checks for any security risks from in-bound and out-bound email messages. When communicating with energy producers in the northern trading region through their trading system, which uses SMTP protocol, Clearswifts MIMEsweeper for SMTP ensures that they have the highest degree of email information security.

“Clearswift provides us with a first class solution. It is very stable which means that I don’t have to spend time doing things like a daily re-configuration of the system but can instead use my time more productively and with a 99.5% spam detection rate it is extremely reliable,” says Martin Wikström.

Customer Profile: Svenska Kraftnät was formed in 1992 and manages the national grid for electrical power, which includes Sweden’s 400 kV and 220 kV lines and stations, international interconnectors. The organisation also has the system responsibility for electricity and natural gas in Sweden. Svenska Kraftnät’s principal task is to manage and develop the Swedish national grid and the electricity market in order to meet Sweden’s need for a safe and economical electricity supply whilst meeting rigorous environmental standards. They have about 300 employees, the majority at their head office in Stockholm and an annual turnover is approximately €700 million.

COMPANY PROFILE

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Svenska Kraftnät have seen an increase in efficiency as limited resource is needed to manage the solution.

Conclusion:Clearswifts email solution has enabled Svenska Kraftnät to maximise the return on their investment in a virtualized environment. They now have a reliable and robust solution which provides the security and protection the organization needs to ensure that it can continue to meet Sweden’s need for a safe, economical and environmentally sound power supply.

Results:Capitalises on investment in virtualised •environment

Improves operational efficiency •

Fast and easy to deploy•

Easy to manage allowing us to get on with our •main job

Stable and reliable•