Webroot® Email Security Service Case Study
Ritz London
The Ritz London Improves Security with Webroot® E-Mail Security SaaS
The Ritz London is one of the world's greatest hotels. With an impeccable reputation for quality since it opened in 1906, The Ritz, based on Piccadilly, is rightly famous for its service and attention to detail. With 120 email users and an increasing number of guest reservations sent in via web-based email, the hotel relies on a secure IT architecture and 24/7 operation. It is imperative that the 20 critical mailboxes - including those for reservations, operations and senior management - are maintained at all times in order to avoid lost business or damage to the hotel's reputation for excellent customer service.
The Problem
For a hotel like The Ritz, the overall email reporting and tracking capabilities must be top-notch in order to efficiently respond to agents' enquiries, bookings, cancellations and even complaints. With an average of 530,000 emails being sent to The Ritz domain each month and 87 percent of these being spam, users were spending vast amounts of time sifting through spam volume. The Ritz was using a SaaS provider that scored spam on a percentage scale but the hotel's email system, GroupWise, was unable to evaluate these percentages. This resulted in a high volume of spam bypassing the filtering folder directly into the users' email accounts.
Unfortunately, the search function was sluggish and ineffective as well, taking up to thirty minutes for the IT Manager to investigate the personal logs for a blocked email or email status by pasting them into notepad and then searching the document. The hotel desperately needed a more robust email security solution that would provide better integration, more efficient logging and reporting, and above all, an excellent level of support.
The Solution
The IT team began looking for an email protection service that could run itself and leave them to concentrate on maintaining the IT systems. In addition, the previous vendor's service and support hadn't always been as helpful as it should have been, so this was a crucial area of improvement. After considering two rival vendors, the technical specifications of Webroot's design functionality - particularly the Web-based administration panel and summary dashboard - greatly impressed the team and they decided on Webroot E-Mail Security SaaS. They were also taken by the “network status aspect" of the solution, which notifies users as they log on whether the MX records and domains are set correctly.
Within the first week of trialing Webroot E-Mail Security SaaS, The Ritz saw its superior capabilities, with an almost real-time, up-to-the-minute email relay. The other deciding factor was Webroot's Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Service. Unlike some rival offerings, the service is always on and protects the hotel from any attempted denial-of-service attacks as all email traffic is routed through Webroot's servers prior to reaching the hotel network. This is particularly important for a smaller scale independent site such as The Ritz.
The Benefits
With a more efficient Web interface and logging capabilities, The Ritz London now has an instant snapshot of all the viruses blocked in any given time period. On average, ten to 20 viruses are prevented from entering the hotel system daily. Greater transparency has been achieved as well due to the more robust reporting capability. The IT team immediately knows the status of an email, allowing the hotel to deal more efficiently with the increasing number of guest reservations.
With the number of unsolicited emails dramatically reduced, users can now focus on their principal tasks instead of wasting time deleting spam messages each day.
Where the hotel has been most impressed, though, is with Webroot's support. When there was a fault with the main Internet line, Webroot quickly re-routed the firewall settings. With the old system, this re-routing of mail could have taken up to twelve hours, but with Webroot E-Mail Security SaaS, it happened almost instantaneously - a vital requirement for a 24/7 operation such as The Ritz.
Comments
"The security service Webroot offers is far superior to anything else on the market." - Glenn Isted, Assistant IT Support Manager, The Ritz London
Resources
Video Testimonials
Archived Webinars
Industry Analysis
Only 12% of IT managers are aware of the potential dangers posed by Web 2.0. Learn More Now.
Cost of Ownership Calculator
Check out our easy to use TCO calculator to find out how much you could be saving with SaaS vs. On-Premise for email and web security!
Calculate your Savings
Copyright 2004 - 2013 Webroot Inc.