NMBS Logistics
WatchGuard and Office-IT help NMBS Logistics achieve a successful transformation.
NMBS Logistics transformed over several years from a state-owned company into a financially healthy private enterprise. A new, centralised ICT environment and a strong increase in the number of network users put the existing network security under serious pressure.
NMBS Logistics has relied on the expertise of Office-IT for several years, and as a WatchGuard Gold Partner, Office-IT was the ideal candidate to optimise the network security.
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NMBS Logistics continued the freight transport activities of the Belgian National Railway Company in 2011 as a private company. A few years later, it had become a thriving private organisation operating with two hundred locomotives and seven thousand freight wagons across numerous European countries.
Technical challenges
The transformation of B Logistics brought several technical challenges. Van den Branden and his colleagues had to consolidate the ICT infrastructures of the different companies. The centralised environment was housed in external data centres with a Disaster Recovery setup. “The centralised environment must support far more end users than before,” he emphasises. “These end users are becoming increasingly mobile. They work not only at the office but also from home or on the road, and require secure access to the ICT facilities at all times.”
To ensure maximum availability wherever the users are, B Logistics now uses two data centres in an active-active setup. This minimises downtime to nearly zero. “It was clear from the beginning that the new centralised environment would greatly impact our security requirements,” says Van den Branden. “The old firewalls were not powerful enough to protect the centralised infrastructure and simultaneously support a growing number of mobile users. Given how fast security threats evolve, it was necessary to adapt. Ransomware like CryptoLocker variants and other Advanced Persistent Threats were new risks. Better monitoring of individual email and web traffic — without violating employee privacy — was also required.”
The solution
B Logistics had been very satisfied with WatchGuard firewalls for years. Switching to another firewall provider was therefore not an obvious choice. “When WatchGuard launched a more powerful firewall, the WatchGuard Firebox M5600, it was the perfect moment to renew our firewall infrastructure,” says Van den Branden. “A demo showing the new security features of the M5600 and the WatchGuard Dimension reporting tool was enough to choose WatchGuard again.” A key advantage of the WatchGuard solution is the ability to fully pseudonymise personal data in reports. These anonymised reports can be used throughout the organisation without violating privacy rules — making the new firewalls perfectly suitable as proxy servers.
Design
For the design of the security architecture, B Logistics worked closely with ICT partner Office-IT, based in Olen. Having collaborated with Office-IT for several years, and given Office-IT’s WatchGuard Gold Partner status, they were the ideal partner to guide this project. The architecture developed by both organisations perfectly secures access for a wide range of users and devices, both inside and outside the company walls, and takes modern threats such as APTs into account. B Logistics now uses an M5600 firewall cluster in both data centres. Additional services implemented include Intrusion Prevention, Application Control, Gateway Antivirus, spamBlocker, WebBlocker and APT Blocker. Because the network administrators were already familiar with WatchGuard products, installation was straightforward.
The result
“The WatchGuard firewalls and associated software provide exceptional insight into network traffic and potential threats,” says Van den Branden. “The processing power of the new firewalls is crucial to run all scans without affecting user experience.” The solution also simplifies management, support and maintenance. Thanks to the cluster configuration where one Firebox automatically takes over when another is stopped maintenance and updates can take place during working hours without users noticing.
“Nowadays we don’t even need to warn users when performing updates: they experience no disruption at all.”
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“The WatchGuard Firewalls and the accompanying software offer a valuable insight into network traffic and potential threats!”
NMBS Logistics