Marisol International offers ocean and air transportation services, both inbound and outbound, as well as customs brokerage and import support services at the highest level of customs compliance, warehousing and crating, export services, and a global network of offices and facilities for storage. There are eleven Marisol offices, including locations in Nashville, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Memphis, Springfield, Kansas City, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The Tulsa operation includes a 60,000 square foot warehouse and crating facility along with 6.5 acres of fenced outside storage.
Need for Customs Security
When Marisol was founded in 2002, with the sensitive nature of the information the business would be handling (credit card, billing, address information, etc.), network and Internet security was an immediate need from startup. Jason Descamps, Marisol’s Chief Information Officer, began a search for the organization’s solution before the doors opened. “We deal regularly with United States customs, which requires that things work correctly all the time, without glitches,” said Descamps. “They don’t tolerate delays, nor do they understand when things break or allow bad traffic through. We needed a security solution that was solid but easy enough to use that I could deploy it around the globe and manage it myself.”
In the end, Descamps considered solutions from Cisco and eSoft. After evaluating the appliances and grading each on ease of use, manageability, scalability, and feature integration, he chose eSoft and purchased eight of the company’s InstaGate EX2 security gateways for all of the company’s initial locations.
“I wasn’t trained on Cisco, and those appliances were not very user-friendly,” said Descamps. “eSoft appliances were easy to use and cost-effective and they could scale really easily. It didn’t hurt that we could integrate an email server and everything we needed—all the functionality and services we needed—all onto one appliance. As a start-up, that was very attractive to us. We knew from the beginning that eSoft would solve our problems then and take us right into the future. We were right—it worked back then and it works now.”
Two of the InstaGate EX2 gateways have recently been replaced with two of the InstaGate 806 gateways – one in Springfield and one in the organization’s co-location disaster recover facility. Two more InstaGate 806 gateways have been ordered for two of Marisol’s larger offices—locations in Kansas City and Tulsa.
Solid and Reliable
eSoft InstaGate security gateways are scalable unified threat management (UTM) solutions that combine Anti-Virus, Spyware, Spam, Phishing, Intrusion Prevention, Web Filtering and more into a high-performance Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) Firewall and IPSec VPN architecture.Through sophisticated inspection capabilities, InstaGate gateways offer unparalleled protection from dynamic, content-based threats that elude traditional firewalls.
eSoft’s patented SoftPak Director™ security services infrastructure ensure that the InstaGates provide maximum protection with the most up-to-date threat databases available.
“The reliability of the eSoft solution has been fantastic,” said Descamps. “We’ve had no downtime in the four and a half years of being open. The only downtime was due to our Internet provider. It’s important that we have things work correctly because U.S. customs demands that. They don’t accept delays—those put us in a bad situation. With the InstaGates, we don’t have to worry about delays. And it’s so simple to order new services right from the appliance.”
Solid Protection and Optimal Productivity
Marisol International must keep its network safe from viruses Trojans, and worms, and eSoft Anti-Virus protects the company against costly network outages caused by these threats. The organization is also benefiting from the productivity-boosting benefits of eSoft’s SpamFilter, which automatically rejects, quarantines, redirects or tags and delivers filtered e-mails. To prevent unintended filtering, SpamFilter allows Marisol to create its own "white lists" of trusted senders, such as customers and business partners. Finally, eSoft’s VPN Manager uses industry-standard security technology (IPSec and PKI) to ensure reliability and iron-clad security.
“We’ve had terrific success with eSoft, and I couldn’t be happier,” said Descamps. “The company’s products do everything they say they do, and the SoftPaks are extra perks that you can order as you need them in such an easy way. You can’t go wrong with eSoft.”
