Customer suCCess

union Bank of Israel Ltd.Closing the Door to malware and Cyber threats in Israel

Two years ago, Union Bank of Israel launched a revolutionary marketing strat-egy. “Your First Second Bank” is an intensive recruiting effort to attract new clients by motivating them to open a second bank account at Israel’s sixth largest bank. However, this can only be successfully achieved if a rigorous, intensive approach to information security is adopted. Union Bank deployed a holistic, unified endpoint security solution from Symantec―in preference to solutions from McAfee and Trend-Micro―to secure 1,300 desktops, laptops, and servers from emerging threats, provide comprehensive malware protection, and automatically detect and block suspicious activities. The bank’s systems are now hardened against attack, and efficiency gains are being accrued: by standardizing on a “one-stop-shop” Symantec security environment, Union Bank has saved the equivalent of one third of an administrator’s time.

one-stop portfolio of integrated information security solutions

When Dori Ephrat and his team at Union Bank of Israel began their tender process for information security solutions, they had a clear picture of what they wanted―and what they didn’t. The op-erations manager explains, “It doesn’t make sense to work with a string of different security provid-ers, each one providing a separate point solution. Instead we wanted to minimize the number of vendors we partner with. That’s why we chose Symantec: their best-of-breed, one-stop portfolio of integrated information security solutions makes it faster, more effective, and less expensive for the bank to manage information security. It answers all of our security questions.”

The relationship began several years ago when Israel’s sixth largest bank decided to replace a mixed assortment of antivirus and other security solutions with Symantec Antivirus. The success of this solution quickly blossomed into a deployment of Symantec™ Endpoint Protection―the endpoint security solution which extends the bank’s antivirus capability into other areas, including antispy-ware, IPS, desktop firewall protection, and Application and Device Control. According to Ephrat, Endpoint Protection arrived at the right time. “Union Bank provides comprehensive banking ser-vices to both private and business clients. It is imperative that our clients have the freedom to bank with us when and how they want. We don’t want malware coming between us and our customers―and Endpoint Protection ensure it doesn’t,” he says.

orGANIZAtIoN ProFILe

Website: www.unionbank.co.il

Industry: Financial Services

Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel

employees: 1,300

symANteC soLutIoNs

Endpoint and Server Security

Why symantec?

· Single, unified information security stack

· Straightforward deployment

· Ease of use compared with CA HIPS

· Support for multiple operating systems

· Prevention of zero day attack

Customer suCCess uNIoN BANk oF IsrAeL LtD.

The bank is using Endpoint Protection to secure 1,300 endpoints and the network from emerging threats. It provides the bank with rigorous malware protection, including antivirus, antispyware, and rootkit protec-tion. From a single, unified console, Ephrat and his team have the flexibility to set poli-cies which automatically analyze application behavior and network communications to detect and block suspicious activities. They can also leverage controls to deny specific device and application activities which the bank considers to be a high risk. “We work with some of Israel’s largest organizations, and we need to support those and other cus-tomers with robust, stable platforms. Endpoint Protection gives us the confidence that our endpoints are safe from threats―however devious―and that those endpoints can support our day-to-day operations,” says Ephrat.

Protecting and hardening the bank’s heterogeneous systems

While Endpoint Protection is the ideal vehicle for protecting the 1,300 endpoints, Symantec™ Critical System Protection is the ideal complement to the business network―protecting Union Bank’s 240 heterogeneous servers (Dell, HP, and IBM servers running Microsoft Windows, HP-UX, and Red Hat Linux) against day zero attacks, hardening the bank’s systems, and helping to maintain compliance via behavior-based security policies.

“When it came to choosing an intrusion pro-tection system for our servers, we looked at Symantec, CA, Cisco and NetIQ,” he explains. “CA has a large presence here in Israel and many people expected that CA Access Control would be our first choice. In fact, we became the first customer in this country for Critical System Protection. We concluded that the Symantec solution was easier to use than CA Access Control, its open architecture provides support for all our operating sys-tems, and we calculated at the time that it would result in the equivalent of saving one third of an administrator’s time.”

Whereas Endpoint Protection is optimized to protect desktops and laptops, Critical System Protection is the ideal choice for protecting

servers―and it really comes into its own when deployed in an open, mixed environ-ment like the one at Union Bank of Israel. “Critical System Protection has a network-friendly approach to server protection, for example by providing “wrappers” around individual services and applications to quickly protect them should a threat be de-tected,” explains Ephrat. “Critical System Protection also has valuable buffer overflow protection, which detects the most common buffer overflows by checking that the stack has not been altered when a function returns.”

soLutIoNs At A GLANCe

key Challenges

• Ensure banking customers’ transactions are free of IT security threats

• Reduce the cost of managing security and storage

• Cut complexity involved in managing multiple fragmented security technologies

symantec Products

• Symantec™ Endpoint Protection

• Symantec™ Critical System Protection

• Symantec™ Enterprise Vault

symantec services

• Symantec Consulting Services

technology environment

• End users: 1,200

• Hardware: Dell, IBM, HP

• Servers: 240

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, 2003; Red Hat Linux, HP-UX

BusINess resuLts AND teCHNICAL BeNeFIts

• Secured 1,300 endpoints and the network from emerging threats

• Provided rigorous malware protection

• Introduced policies to automatically detect and block suspicious activities

• Protected 240 heterogeneous servers against day zero attacks

• Hardened the bank’s systems

• Helped maintain compliance via behavior-based security policies

• Saved the equivalent of one third of an administrator’s time

“Symantec Endpoint Protection gives

us the confidence that our endpoints

are safe from threats—however

devious—and that those endpoints can

support our day-to-day operations.”

Dori ephrat

Operations Manager

Union Bank of Israel

Customer suCCess uNIoN BANk oF IsrAeL LtD.

The advantages don’t end there. Together, Endpoint Protection and Critical System Pro-tection are helping to proactively harden Union Bank of Israel’s network, addressing network security vulnerabilities through the implementation of software version/patches, and adopting better configurations and op-eration policies.

Visit to symantec executive Briefing Center “a vital learning experience”

According to Ephrat, the Symantec Executive Briefing Center (EBC) was instrumental in moving this showcase endpoint security de-ployment to fruition. “Our goal throughout has been to limit the number of security ven-dors we work with and to partner with a single vendor with a large line up of best-of-breed solutions,” he says. “A visit to the EBC was a vital learning experience in that journey. It showed us that Symantec has the vision, the knowledge, and the technology roadmap to support all the bank’s information security and data integrity needs. Now, for example, we’re examining new Symantec solutions including Symantec Brightmail™, Veritas Storage Foundation™, and Veritas CommandCentral™ Storage based on what we learned from the EBC.”

As Union Bank of Israel continues its quest to secure the business from threats and prevent information loss, the tender process contin-ues. Now however, they’re mainly concen-trated on just one vendor: Symantec.

Copyright © 2010 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec logo, Brightmail, Enterprise Vault, Storage Foundation, and CommandCentral are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. All product information is subject to change without notice. Part Number 20957464

“CA has a large presence here in Israel,

and many people expected that the

CA Host-Based Intrusion Prevention

System—CA Access Control―would

be our first choice. In fact, we became

the first customer in this country for

[Symantec] Critical System Protection.”

Dori ephrat

Operations Manager

Union Bank of Israel

“A visit to Symantec’s Executive

Briefing Center was a vital learning

experience in that journey. It

showed us that Symantec has the

vision, the knowledge, and the

technology roadmap to support

all the bank’s information security

and data integrity needs.”

Dori ephrat

Operations Manager

Union Bank of Israel