Cisco Cisco Email Security Appliance X1050 Guida Informativa
Customer Case Study
© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
ALLEGRO AT A GLANCE
Headquarters: Poznan, Poland
Market Area: Eastern Europe
Business: Online auction hosting, online
payment systems, price comparison services,
online classified advertisements and more
payment systems, price comparison services,
online classified advertisements and more
Year Founded: 1999
Customer Base: Over 10 million users
THE CISCO IRONPORT ADVANTAGE
● Proprietary operating system to ensure the
email infrastructure is never overwhelmed
● The industry’s most effective reputation and
virus outbreak filters
● Maximized throughput to deliver critical mail
much faster than most traditional systems
● Single gateway appliance with hassle-free,
low-maintenance management helps ensure
low total cost of ownership (TCO)
low total cost of ownership (TCO)
Pioneer in Online Auctions Places a Winning Bid with Cisco IronPort
Email Security
Overview
As one of Eastern Europe’s leading e-commerce platforms, the Allegro
Group relies exclusively on email to conduct its business transactions,
which include general merchandise and trading, as well as automotive
and real estate auctions.
With the proliferation of spam and viruses, the fast-growing Poland-
based business demanded an email security system that would protect
its outbound and inbound flow of email traffic by helping to ensure that
client notifications, bidding schedules, pricing comparisons, and
subscriptions would not be jeopardized by malicious traffic infiltrating its
expanding network.
The Situation
Operating as a unit of Naspers (a multinational provider of electronic
media and print media products), the Allegro Group has grown to more
than 1100 employees throughout Eastern Europe, with branch offices located in the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, the Ukraine, and Hungary.
The expanding organization required an agile security system to help ensure that its email-based commerce would
not be compromised by Internet threats. Allegro demanded a low-maintenance solution that would deliver zero false
positives and result in minimal downtime, regardless of traffic volumes. Following an extensive search and rigorous
testing, the organization turned to Cisco
®
to help meet its security needs.
Technical Challenges
With more than 100 servers sending email through its system, 550 employees at its headquarters, and a rapidly
growing customer base in excess of 10 million users across Eastern Europe, Allegro required an upgrade to its
existing threat solution that would safeguard the basis for all of its commercial exchanges: email.
Allegro’s existing system proved unable to keep up with the demands of this dynamic organization. Its legacy system
was unreliable and demanded frequent manual updates and filter reconfigurations to prevent spam, viruses, and
other malware from penetrating its system and jeopardizing the speed and reliability its online customers expect.
The Cisco IronPort Advantage
In the Cisco IronPort
®
C-Series Email Security Appliance, Allegro found a low-maintenance, problem-free solution to
help ensure the uninterrupted flow of legitimate email traffic. Built on the revolutionary Cisco IronPort AsyncOS
®
operating system, the all-in-one appliance consolidates the capabilities of multiple servers by employing a range of
“Our old system required constant tuning. We don’t have to manage or
maintain the Cisco IronPort C-
maintain the Cisco IronPort C-
Series appliance. It just works.”
— Marcin Mazurek, Network Infrastructure Manager, The Allegro Group