The GFI Unlimited licensing model gives customers the option to start working with any solution included in it. Of course, it does not make much sense to start using all products at once, because a typical SMB company often does not have sufficient technical capacity to deploy and manage them in a big-bang style. However, if it wants to improve its IT security level, it first needs to identify priority areas and focus its attention there.
The areas covered by GFI Software products can be divided into three categories: communication, security and network performance. GFI Unlimited tools can be suitably combined to comprehensively cover each area and adequately ensure its reliable and continuous operation.
Communication
One of the most popular combinations within the GFI Unlimited software library is the integration of the Kerio Connect mail server and the GFI Archiver email archiving solution. The combination of both products makes it possible to address current pressing email challenges such as slow mail server response, the ever-growing volume of emails, complicated searches for older mail, or legal requirements for retaining original business correspondence.
According to last year's survey among local users of GFI Software solutions in the area of email infrastructure, 32% of IT administrators most frequently struggle with finding lost emails, while 23% face insufficient email storage capacity. Standalone mail servers have only limited capabilities for addressing these issues. The combination of both products can be configured very easily by creating a journaling mailbox in Kerio Connect and linking it to GFI Archiver. It then provides SMB companies with higher mail server performance, cost-effective storage of emails, faxes, files and calendar records, as well as user access to the email archive—from both desktop and mobile devices.
Kerio Connect and GFI Archiver are also often complemented by GFI MailEssenstials, anti-spam and anti-malware protection that prevents unwanted content from entering at the mail server level. The main reason is that 92% of all malware enters corporate networks via email, and 90% of all cyberattacks begin with phishing emails.
Network security
Threats to corporate networks are increasing, not only in perception but also in numbers: last year, a total of 12.5% more vulnerabilities were recorded than in 2017. The highest number of new vulnerabilities was registered in Linux and Android operating systems and Qualcomm mobile firmware, and among applications, in Mozilla Firefox and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Together with the newly applicable GDPR regulation on mandatory reporting of personal data breaches, companies that do not address vulnerabilities in their networks expose themselves to the risk of operational disruption, reputational damage and high fines for violating GDPR requirements.
Securing an entire corporate network cannot be handled by a single solution; multiple tools need to be combined. First and foremost, protection must be ensured with the help of a strong firewall provided by Kerio Control. Since version 9.3, it has included built-in high-availability and failover functionality, enabling small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to eliminate the risks of connection loss and acute network vulnerability threats.
Another tool is GFI LanGuard, which provides automated update management and vulnerability scanning on computers and mobile devices. Eliminating manual software patching significantly reduces the risk of attacks caused by unpatched systems, as the automated process minimizes human error. Complete protection is complemented by GFI EventsManager, a log management solution that enables centralized collection, sorting, evaluation and consolidation of logs from various sources, as well as reporting in compliance with regulatory requirements.
Network performance
The ever-increasing number of applications and cloud services is making corporate networks an increasingly complex environment—by the end of 2020 alone, the number of web applications in use is expected to grow by 50%. Today, applications operate on networks like unguided missiles; internet bandwidth can easily become saturated, causing every additional application or cloud service to stop working. As a result of a cascading effect, connectivity often collapses simply because someone is watching a YouTube video or using a streaming service.
Users of Kerio Control can take advantage of features that selectively block incoming traffic and thus relieve bandwidth. With the Kerio Control Web Filter tool, which also includes application monitoring functionality, access to applications and various content categories can be selectively blocked or allowed. Based on this, communication that places excessive demands on bandwidth, such as streaming media, can be prohibited, or peer-to-peer networks can be blocked.
A combination with the Exinda Network Orchestrator solution (which is part of the GFI portfolio but is not directly included in GFI Unlimited) adds another dimension to network performance management through application prioritization. Exinda makes it possible to allocate applications so that critical ones continue to operate while non-essential ones are put aside. The goal of prioritization solutions is to identify applications and optimize bandwidth usage by creating precisely targeted policies that guide how users use applications. This solution makes it easy to identify traffic peaks that lead to performance outages of critical systems and apply a policy guaranteeing priority connectivity allocation for key applications such as ERP systems, IP telephony, and more.
More at http://www.gfi-unlimited.cz
Article author: ZEBR.ai editorial team
