Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO)
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Customer Statement, Karl Pilgrim has been ICT Central Service Manager at Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) for eight years |
"The Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) aims to be a trusted and valued partner in the delivery and operation of information and communication systems to the police and criminal justice organisations in the UK.
Two years ago we decided to implement 700 licences of Lumension® Device Control and Lumension® Application Control - Standard Edition to protect the PITO network from employees running rogue applications and connecting unauthorised USB devices to desktops.
We currently do not allow laptops to connect directly to the network; they connect remotely via our Citrix Farm of servers and as such we secure them by other means. In October 2005, we took the decision to deploy the Citrix version of Lumension® Endpoint Security Suite to provide protection against rogue executables to our new Citrix Farm due to the changes in the server OS and the latest version of Citrix.
The key benefit of deploying Lumension® Application Control is that it stops staff from running rogue applications, and allows administrators to restrict access to applications to those who need them. In a secure government environment control of USB-connecting devices is a growing problem, and Lumension® Device Control helps us ensure that sensitive documents are only stored where they are supposed to be. .
In addition to Lumension® Endpoint Security Suite, we use mail and web filtering solutions and antivirus software. However, anti-virus software can never be fully up to date as new viruses are being released all the time and it takes a while for the AV vendors to issue updates. If an executable file gets downloaded from the web Lumension® Endpoint Security Suite, it stops it from running on the network until it has been authorised. An example of the benefit of this approach is that when the Nachi worm was released, some of our people inadvertently downloaded it before the AV signatures were updated or patches applied network-wide. Lumension® Application Control simply would not allow it to run, and once the antivirus software received its update after the outbreak it automatically cleaned the infected machines. If we hadn't been using Lumension® Endpoint Security Suite, there was a good chance that there could have been a network wide infection resulting in a major disruption to our business.
With over 700 PITO staff served by only three IT security staff covering four sites, we have to manage our limited resources carefully so that any untoward problems do not result in an undue workload for our team. We were also pleased to see a product we were already using get the Cabinet Office's new Claims Tested Mark."