Del Monte Drives Growth with Security-Enhanced Collaboration Solution

Based in San Francisco, Calif., Del Monte Foods is a leading producer and distributor of branded food and pet products. The company has more than 5,400 full-time employees.To seed future growth and build on the company's competitive edge, leaders at Del Monte focus on providing the infrastructure necessary for employees to work together and share information without risking the integrity of the company's intellectual property.

 

"One of our highest priorities in the IT organization has been to lower the barriers to cross-team collaboration, while still ensuring the highest possible level of information security," says Jonathan Wynn, manager of Advanced Technology and Collaborative Services at Del Monte Foods. "And, we've strived to achieve that goal while maintaining a lean, highly efficient approach to IT management."

 

Increasingly, Del Monte has architected its collaboration environment around Microsoft SharePoint Server technology, together with Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail messaging and collaboration software, and Microsoft Office Communications Server.

 

"Our sales people use our intranet portal to collaborate on pricing documents; our finance people use the site to track purchase approvals; and we even use SharePoint Server to help manage documents that contain our intellectual property, including our product recipes and formulas. Securing collaboration through SharePoint Server is the lifeline of our business operations," says Wynn.

 

Del Monte wanted to provide employees with controlled access to intranet resources, while enhancing the protection of sensitive corporate data. The company also wanted to gain real-time insight into the performance of its collaboration environment without the need to dedicate additional staff to health-monitoring tasks.

 

Previously, the company used Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint. Del Monte sought to build on the threat protection that it had already achieved while further simplifying IT management activities.

 

"As we move to only 64-bit supported hardware, we wanted to make sure that the filtering solution we selected supported this architecture and provided improved metrics around health events," says Wynn. The company was also searching for a filtering solution that supported Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

 

The Solution

Del Monte upgraded to Microsoft Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint.

 

"We wanted a tool that offered protection against malware, viruses, and other threats through multiple scan engines," Wynn says. "Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint combines advanced detection with ease of use on the management side. And with the success we've achieved with Forefront Security for SharePoint 2007, it only made sense to continue with the next version of the software.

 

Comprehensive Protection: Del Monte uses Microsoft Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint to help protect its intranet, and Active Directory Domain Services to manage identity-based access to resources.

 

"Securing our collaboration environment is a priority for us," says Wynn.In particular, the company needs to secure its Web-based sales, finance, marketing, research and quality systems applications, which all contain sensitive proprietary information.

 

"Active Directory is at the heart of our security infrastructure," says Wynn. It provides a centralized way of configuring security groups, which are applied to all of the resources on our intranet. If an employee doesnt have access to a particular site, or application, or document, theyre not going to be able to see it."

 

Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint incorporates five scanning engines from industry-leading vendors into a single solution to help provide comprehensive protection against the latest malware and viruses. In balancing a defense-in-depth approach against the need for maximum throughput, Wynn appreciates the ability to run the scanning engines in different combinations across the server system.

 

"We can use Intelligent Engine Management to configure the number and types of engines to run based on different types of scan jobs," says Wynn. "This gives us fine-tuned control, so we strike the right balance between security and optimal server performance."

 

Centralized Management:Wynn's team uses the Administrator Console in Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint to configure file and keyword filtering rules to minimize threats from attachments and block the upload or download of out-of-policy content, as well as the dashboard tool to obtain a consolidated view of critical system health statistics.

 

"The dashboard tool gives us a snapshot of the critical information we need to know so that we can identify and respond to malware incidents immediately."

 

By deploying Microsoft Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint for protection and Active Directory Domain Services for identitybased access, Del Monte helps increase its collaboration, sharing, and access to information, while better protecting its assets. By strengthening its security capabilities, the company is equipped to aggressively pursue its collaboration strategy, taking full advantage of its investment in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

 

Enhanced Business Control without Compromising Flexibility:By using Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint, Del Monte benefits from tighter control of its business assets, including its intellectual property, through the use of multiple scanning engines and enhanced file filtering capabilities. Because Del Monte can configure the solution to meet its own business rules and changing security needs, the company retains maximum operational flexibility.

 

"The ability to configure the settings at a granular level enables us to optimize our approach over time, so we can ensure rigorous security across all of our portal resources without negatively impacting productivity," says Wynn.

 

Improved IT Management through Real-Time Health Monitoring:The centralized Administrator Console and dashboard management tools in Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint provide the Del Monte IT team with access to consolidated information and analytics, helping to ease security management tasks.Through these tools, Wynn and others can quickly evaluate the performance of scanning engines and track malware incidents and responses across the companys entire server system.

 

"Because I can get a comprehensive security status update in a matter of minutes, I can quickly prioritize the issues I need to address across projects and focus more time on achieving business goals," says Wynn.