Mining the cloud for security

1 July 2013 Information Security

A specialist in outsourced operation and maintenance of minerals and metals processing plants, Minopex boasts a workforce of more than 2000 employees working in a number of different locations. It has operations in South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Mozambique and Tanzania and, together with its sister company, DRA, offers clients a one-stop shop for processing requirements.

The widely distributed network of employees working with a wide variety of devices presented Shape Technology Management with a number of unique business challenges.

Prior to the installation of the Panda Cloud Systems Management (PCSM) solution, all software, hardware and site audits were manually managed by Shape Technology Management on behalf of Minopex. Audits were time-consuming, taking four to five months to complete, as well as laborious.

Phillip Abrie, Shape’s ICT manager, had to collect information from each machine (more than 500 in total as well as 150 laptop users) in a variety of different locations. This incurred additional travelling expenses and cost employees in terms of downtime. In addition, a number of inexpensive management applications had resulted in fragmentation of data, which in turn had created inefficiencies within the system. Maintenance of the system was time-consuming and inefficient.

As a long-standing Panda Security partner, Shape turned to Panda for a solution. “Panda Cloud Systems Management provides a valuable addition to the security solution,” asserts Abrie. Accessible through the Panda Cloud Partner Centre, a one-stop console enabling management and security of each client’s IT infrastructure, it offered Shape the ideal tool for managing its customer.

With PCSM, Shape is able to perform audits, make diagnoses and resolve incidents wherever they are and whenever they occur and in a non-intrusive manner, thus permitting Minopex to focus on its business.

“Thanks to the installation of PCSM, maintenance of the system is now minimal. PCSM is everything we wanted and needed, with one of the real attractions being that we are able to customise as we go.”

PCSM offers users an easy and affordable way to centrally manage, monitor and support all of an organisation’s devices from a single console. The evolution of remote management and monitoring (RMM) solutions towards centralised and unified platforms has created a simpler, more efficient way to manage devices. The integration of advanced tools (such as monitoring, scripts and patch management, etc) has resulted in a higher quality of service.

Benefits of Panda Cloud Partner Centre

* Centralised monitoring: Shape is able to manage Minopex’s IT resources proactively from a single Web-based console, reducing costs and improving efficiencies.

* Ease of management: Management is simple and 100% cloud-hosted so no additional on-site infrastructure is required. Automation of tasks eases IT load.

* Remote control: PCSM’s ability to manage a large number of devices remotely all from a single console, obviates the need to deal with individual workstations.

* Affordability: PCSM is an easy-to-use, affordable tool. Software is constantly updated and extended and the communication agent is light.

* Inventory: PCSM allows users to know what they have at a glance.

* Reporting: Work can be evaluated regularly. It is possible to show who did what, with which device, and for how long, etc.

For more information contact Panda Security, +27 (0)21 683 3899, [email protected]





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