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Satisfy clients and win new ones - MacManus Group - Company Operations

Communications News, June, 2001

Sophisticated, secure technology streamlines and enhances global services.

New York-based MacManus Group is a $6.3 billion global network of advertising and communications companies, with more than 7,500 employees and 150 offices in 70 countries. Sophisticated intranet and extranet solutions are used to streamline communications and enhance client service.

Externally, MacManus needed a secure, cost-effective way to share real-time information among its various offices and clients, such as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and General Motors. For example, an agency team might want to present a new print ad or TV spot to a client via a real-time videoconference, or exchange confidential marketing or media plans electronically.

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Craig Metzler, MacManus' regional IT director responsible for global communications strategy, and the IT group are charged with connecting all MacManus offices worldwide. Realizing that the frame relay WAN connecting offices in the U.S., London and Hong Kong was more expensive than private networks, too slow for real-time applications, difficult to interface with other organizations and a challenge to access from remote locations, the group decided to migrate from WAN connections to virtual private network (VPN) connections running over the Internet.

Using the Internet as a transport mechanism presented several challenges, the most critical being security and the ability to securely manage a widely dispersed network.

"The way to use the Internet is to create a VPN with high-speed local connections to ISPs," Metzler says. "At that point, it becomes critical to have one security policy that's centrally managed."

MacManus chose FireWall-1 from Check Point Software, with its fully integrated and transparent encryption capabilities, policy-based management, and enterprise-wide security with central management and control.

"A key advantage for us was being able to deploy firewalls without a management console, that could be managed only by our global communications team," Metzler says.

Working with reseller and security consultant DataWay Inc., MacManus has deployed FireWall-1 at more than 40 sites, connecting more than 100 offices on five continents. Today, key VPN sites include New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Hamburg, Paris, Milan, Moscow, Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Mexico City.

With all of these locations, MacManus faced the challenge of managing all the IP addresses, and wanted to be able to centrally manage multiple sites and hold users accountable for network usage. The company also needed to manage IP services on multiple platforms, including Windows NT and Unix.

"We are using meta IP in about a third of our installations," Metzler says. "Our objective with meta IP is to use it to manage dynamic DNS and create a seamless follow-me capability for real-time, interactive applications. This is important as we grow to use more types of applications that have to be able to find a user, no matter what office he might be in."

Internet connection speeds range from T-1/E-1 speeds for the typical office to T-3 connections for large offices, and 128 kbps ISDN connections for smaller offices in developing countries, where connectivity options are limited and costs are high. What started as a network to provide Internet access, e-mail transport and secure access to intranet and extranet sites has grown to include access to a wide range of applications, including Peoplesoft, Citrix, AS/400 applications and real-time, multimedia applications.

"This growth has required us to increase connection speeds and migrate to faster firewall servers," Metzler says. "FireWall-1's ability to be deployed on platforms, ranging from NT to Solaris and Linux, has allowed us to keep pace with increasing traffic going through our firewalls. The ability to add hardware acceleration and deploy firewalls that operate in high-availability mode, with automatic failover and load balancing across clustered servers, has been a key part of our ability to run mission-critical applications across our VPN."

"The VPN has also allowed us to simplify our remote access strategy," notes Metzler. "We have many users that travel extensively or work from home. Through a simple connection to the Internet, our users can gain secure access to our systems from virtually anywhere in the world. Utilizing the SecuRemote and SecureClient products from Check Point, we have been able to provide secure access to hosts located behind our firewalls.

"Obviously, authentication, encryption and centralized management are key to a widely distributed remote access strategy," adds Metzler. "Fortunately, the remote access clients interface seamlessly with the X.509 digital certificates we issue from our own certificate authority. Where we have even stronger authentication requirements we can use systems such as RSA's SecureID. FireWall-1 integrates seamlessly with all of the major authentication systems.

Technology Industry

Satisfy clients and win new ones - MacManus Group - Company Operations

Communications News, June, 2001

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