KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – July 22, 2013 – Great Eastern Life Assurance (Malaysia) Berhad (Great Eastern Life) is going beyond the normal scope of financial protection as they announce the partnership with Symantec Corporation to strengthen Great Eastern Life’s information protection with Symantec’s comprehensive suite of solutions, providing the key stakeholders of the organisation a peace of mind knowing that their information is protected.
With a history that spans more than 104 years, Great Eastern Life embarked on a brand repositioning last year as a Life company. This transition puts customers at large at the centre of the organisation's heart, with much emphasis on data protection. It is critical for the organisation not just to deliver financial security but also data protection to its 2.9 million policyholders and 17,000 agents across Malaysia.
“In order to effectively meet the various requirements and expectations of our stakeholders, the IT department has a responsibility to proactively review and implement technologies that strengthen our company’s information protection posture. We have strong collaboration within the organisation, in terms of people and process, to implement the necessary measures,” said Vincent Chin, Great Eastern Life’s Senior Vice President and Head, Information Technology.
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Nigel Tan, Director of Systems Engineering, Symantec Malaysia
Vincent Chin, Senior Vice President and Head, Information Technology, Great Eastern Life Assurance (Malaysia) Berhad
Alex Ong, Country Director, Symantec Malaysia
He added, “Great Eastern Life has a long standing and strong partnership with Symantec in information security, storage management and high availability. Symantec’s vision and leadership in information security and storage technologies complement Great Eastern Life’s IT objectives and business aspirations.”
Alex Ong, Symantec Malaysia’s Country Director said, “As the IT security landscape continues to evolve, companies need to be better prepared to protect their most critical business data with advanced technology. Great Eastern Life’s move to place information protection as one of their top priorities is commendable. Symantec’s long term partnership with Great Eastern Life in protecting their business’ critical information and policyholders is a demonstration of the strength of our technology and comprehensive product portfolio, trusted by one of the largest and oldest insurance company in Malaysia. We are committed to work with Great Eastern Life in continuing to provide leading solutions to ensure their IT infrastructure is resilient, flexible and well protected.”
Investing in Securing the Future
Great Eastern Life has set its sight on developing a good security culture in its business ecosystem, which includes its employees and business partners. “We conduct periodic security and compliance communication sessions to increase the awareness level on security and to empower our employees and business partners with best practices to stay safe online,” Chin said.
Such initiatives complement the information security systems and policies that the company has been implementing.
“Essentially, information security is beyond technology as it encompasses the management of people and business processes. The users in our business environment can be the strongest or the weakest link to information security, therefore developing a good security culture among users across our company is critical. This culture is in fact driven top-down in Great Eastern Life,” he explained.
In strengthening the information protection of its agency networks, Great Eastern Life has recently partnered with Symantec in offering Norton Internet Security to help its agency force enhance security on their endpoint devices. Chin pointed out that this is an important initiative as the agency network is a vital component to the company’s business ecosystem.
In addition, to ensure the best possible protection against new and evolving threats, Great Eastern Life had taken extensive initiatives on endpoint protection by standardising on Symantec Protection Suite and Symantec Mail Security to protect its desktops, laptops, and email infrastructure. Based on Great Eastern Life’s statistics, about 80 percent of their incoming email was spam, which could pose a security threat to their systems. The company has seen a notable reduction in spam since implementing Symantec Mail Security. In addition to reduce email server workload, Symantec’s security solutions also provide an overview of the state of security across the organisation.
As safeguarding customer data and ensuring data integrity are Great Eastern Life’s top priority, the company has selected Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) and has implemented whole disk encryption for its PCs and Notebooks. According to Chin, “SEP has enabled us to enforce policy on USB usage besides disk encryption, protection against malware and network threats. With the SEP central console, we have visibility of the information security posture and status of protection for our PCs and servers. Symantec solutions combined with other security controls provide us with more comprehensive measures in information protection.
In terms of compliance, Great Eastern Life implemented Symantec Control Compliance Suite (CCS) to automate compliance checks for servers and databases. “Without the CCS tool, it is very laborious for us to perform “eye-ball” checks against hardening standards and known vulnerabilities. The introduction of CCS gives us better control of policies implementation. In addition, the centralised management console features provides a bird’s eye view of our IT compliance posture and enables our system engineers to respond quickly in identifying gaps,” Chin said.
Managing Information Growth Through Storage Management
With the rapid growth of information in businesses of all sizes, the cost of managing the information is also escalating. According to Symantec’s 2012 State of Information Survey, the total size of information stored globally by all businesses has reached 2.2 zettabytes.
Building on the company’s strong fundamental of IT infrastructure, Great Eastern Life is strengthening its storage management, consolidation and optimisation initiatives in addressing the rapid increase of information as a result of the expansion of the company’s customer base and agency network.
According to Chin, “Great Eastern Life has made significant investments over the last few years to achieve economies of scale and uplift its overall capabilities. The company has embraced new technologies and initiated strategic programs, which include being a part of its regional data centre consolidation, server consolidation, virtualisation, storage and backup consolidation.”
Great Eastern Life’s IT team today manages a total storage capacity of more than 200 terabytes residing on enterprise storage supporting well over 100 business applications. This has grown exponentially from 60 terabytes in a span of three years due to business growth and new business capabilities that leveraged on IT to provide the competitive edge.
Along with this exponential growth in storage came a new challenge to ensure backups can be completed within the allocated time and prevent using business hours for backup requirements. With Symantec NetBackup and Veritas Storage Foundation already in place at Great Eastern Life, this provides a resilient foundation for the company’s IT infrastructure to handle the growth and this was further enhanced with Symantec NetBackup Data Protection Optimization as the natural choice for data deduplication technology.
A proven solution with real-world deduplication ratios as high as 15:1, Symantec NetBackup Data Protection Optimization enabled Great Eastern Life to maintain the five hours backup window. Additionally, Symantec NetBackup Data Protection Optimization offers features to optimise resource utilisation by reducing energy consumption, data centre footprint and overall storage costs.
The adoption of Symantec NetBackup suite of data protection solutions enables the IT team at Great Eastern Life to perform effective daily operations as Symantec NetBackup provides a unified policy management that allows end-to-end management of the entire data lifecycle, with backup and recovery options to meet different business needs.
Moving Forward
Looking ahead, Great Eastern Life is now working on the next wave of IT initiatives. This includes the possible adoption of private cloud solutions and software as a service (SaaS) to cater to its escalating IT resource requirements as a result of increasing business demands for IT services and its burgeoning pool of field agents which now totals more than 17,000. “We are monitoring these trends and technologies closely on how they can benefit our business. As a financial institution, we will apply stringent reviews on the security aspect of cloud solutions prior to any adoption,” said Chin.
For Great Eastern Life, having solutions that can provide comprehensive protection and strong vendor support are critical to ensure IT security, data privacy and scalability in storage management are effective, as the company continues to grow and stay at the forefront of the insurance industry.
Symantec products implemented at Great Eastern Life:
Symantec Control Compliance Suite
Symantec Protection Suite
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Veritas CommandCentral Storage
Veritas Storage Foundation
Symantec NetBackup
Symantec NetBackup Data Protection Optimization
Symantec Ops Center Analytics
Symantec Endpoint Encryption Removable Storage
Symantec Encryption Management Server/PGP Universal Server
Symantec Drive Encryption/Whole Disk Encryption
大东方人寿与赛门铁克成为合作伙伴，强化公司资讯安全保护方案
吉隆坡，马来西亚 – 2013年7月 22日 – 大东方人寿保险(马来西亚)有限公司(简称大东方人寿)超越一般财务保障范畴，宣布与赛门铁克展开合作关系，采用赛门铁克全面完整的解决方案，进一步强化大东方人寿的资讯安全保护，确保公司重要利益关系客户资讯得到完善保护，让他们更加安心及高枕无忧。
去年，创建至今超过104年的大东方人寿重新设定公司品牌定位，转型为一家与客户共同为人生喝彩的良伴 (LIFE Company)。这项转型计划将客户视为企业的核心力量，资讯保护就是极为重要的关键。公司不仅仅必须为全马各地超过290万个保单客户和 17, 000 名代理员提供财务保障，更必须兼顾资料安全管理。
日新月异的网络威胁现象、不断变化的法规，以及每日迅速增加的资讯量等因素，导致资讯保护成为每家企业的重要部分。另外，马来西亚最新通过的2010年个人资料保护法令制定了许多法规需求(例如：保护个人资料的重要性)，这也促使大东方人寿更加关注资料保护这个部分。
“为了满足客户的不同需求和期待，资讯科技部门有责任积极审视及实施能够强化公司资料保护方面的科技。无论是人才、程序或执行必要措施，公司内部都拥有稳健的整合方案。”大东方人寿资讯资深副总裁兼资讯科技部门主管陈国麟先生表示。
他补充说明：“大东方人寿在资讯安全管理、储存管理方案及高应用性解决方案方面与赛门铁克建立悠久稳健的合作关系。赛门铁克在资讯安全管理和储存科技方面的理念和领导能力，能够与大东方人寿的目标与商业愿景达到相辅相成的作用。”
马来西亚赛门铁克区域总监王和伟表示：“随着资讯科技网络安全不断演进，企业必须做好充分准备，采用先进科技来保护重要商业数据。大东方人寿将资讯保护列为企业优先考量之一的做法非常值得赞扬。赛门铁克与大东方人寿建立长期合作关系，保护公司商业重要资讯和保单客户资料，这充分验证了我们在科技方面的卓越优势及拥有完整产品解决方案，因此获得马来西亚最历史悠久及最大保险公司之一的信赖。我们会竭尽全力与大东方人寿紧密合作，持续提供领先市场的解决方案，确保他们的资讯科技设备可适应变化、弹性灵活及提供完善保护。”
投资现在，保障未来
大东方人寿设定目标为其公司商业生态系统推行完善的资讯安全保护文化，其中也包含员工和商业伙伴：“我们定期举办安全性及遵循性相关会议活动，提高员工及商业伙伴在这方面的警觉程度，让他们在使用网络时可采取最安全的措施。”陈先生表示。
这些措施有助于强化公司目前采用的资讯安全系统和政策。
“原则上，资讯安全管理不仅仅取决科技，更包括人力管理和商业程序。我们的商业环境用户与资讯安全管理的连接可能是最强或最差的，因此在用户群中创造出完善良好的安全管理文化非常重要。事实上，大东方人寿公司从上到下都遵循这个文化。”他进一步解释。
为了加强代理员网络的资讯保护管理，大东方人寿最近与赛门铁克合作提供诺顿网络安全管理(Norton Internet Security)，帮助代理员加强他们端点设备的安全管理。陈国麟指出，这是一项非常重要的决策，因为代理员网络就是公司商业生态系统的重要部分。
除此之外， 为了确保在面对不断更新及演变的网络威胁时提供最好的安全保护，大东方人寿在端点防护方面投入大量资源，统一采用赛门铁克安全防护配套(Symantec Protection Suite)和赛门铁克电子邮件安全解决方案(Symantec Mail Security)以保护公司的桌上型电脑、手提电脑和电邮装置。大东方人寿统计数据显示，大约80%的接收邮件都是垃圾邮件，这可能对公司系统造成安全威胁。装置赛门铁克电子邮件安全解决方案后，大东方人寿公司发现垃圾邮件明显减少。除了减少电邮伺服器的工作量，赛门铁克的安全解决方案也提供企业整体安全状况管理。
由于保护客户资料和确保数据完整性是大东方人寿的优先事项，该公司选择了赛门铁克端点防护安全解决方案(Symantec Endpoint Protection，简称SEP)，同时为所有桌上型电脑和手提电脑装置全磁碟加密软件。陈国麟表示：“除了磁碟加密、阻截恶意软件和网络安全威胁，SEP解决方案也能让我们制定USB使用政策。SEP中央控制台让我们可以掌控桌上型电脑和伺服器的资讯安全管理和防护进度。赛门铁克解决方案与其它安全控制措施结合，为我们提供更完整全面的资讯安全保护。”
在使用遵循性方面，大东方人寿装置了赛门铁克整体控制解决方案配套(Control Compliance Suite，简称CCS)，自动化检查伺服器和数据库的整体安全和遵循状态：“缺少CCS解决方案的情况下，我们必须以人工方式检查系统安全强化指南及安全漏洞。CCS解决方案的推出让我们在掌控政策实施方面更趋完善。另外，中央控制台也具备评估资讯科技遵循性状况的鸟瞰图功能，让我们的系统工程师可在发现应用缺口时迅速处理。”陈国麟说。
采用储存管理方案，管理信息增加现况
随着不同类型企业的资讯信息迅速增加，管理信息的成本也逐渐提升。赛门铁克2012年资讯现况调查报告显示，所有企业的信息存储总量已高达2.2 zettabytes。
奠定稳健资讯科技设备基础的同时，大东方人寿也强化其储存管理、整合巩固及优化措施，管理因客户群和代理员网络日益扩展而迅速增加的信息。
陈国麟表示：“过去几年，大东方人寿投入大量资金以符合规模经济现况及提升公司整体能力。公司采用了崭新科技及推动策略性计划，其中包括整合区域数据中心、伺服器整合、虚拟化、储存和备份集中管理。”
目前，大东方人手资讯科技部门团队管理超过200TB的企业总储存量，支援超过100个商业应用程序。由于业务成长和利用资讯科技新功能以提高企业竞争优势等因素，导致这些储存量在短短3年内翻倍增加。
储存量的翻倍增加也带来了新挑战，企业必须确保在既定时间内完成备份，同时避免在工作时间进行备份要求。大东方人寿已经装置了赛门铁克NetBackup资料备份解决方案和Veritas储存管理方案，为公司科技资讯设备提供弹性处理基础以应付信息增加现象，重复数据删除科技的产品选件 – 赛门铁克NetBackup资料保护优化解决方案则进一步强化系统表现。
赛门铁克NetBackup资料保护优化解决方案是一款实际重复数据删除比例高达15:1的可靠产品，这让大东方人寿可以维持长达5小时的备份时段。另外，它也具备减少电量消耗、数据中心占用空间和整体储存成本等特点，可最大程度优化资源利用率。
装置赛门铁克NetBackup资料保护解决方案让大东方人寿的科技资讯团队可以更有效率
地执行日常营运，因为此解决方案提供通用政策管理系统，让用户可以对整个数据生命周期进行端点至端点管理，同时提供备份和复原选项以满足不同商业模式的需求。
展望未来
展望未来，大东方人寿已开始朝着下一波资讯科技发展浪潮做出努力。为了应付业务增
长而提升的资讯科技服务需求，以及满足迅速成长代理员人数（目前代理员总数已超过17,000名）的资源需求，大东方人寿采取的措施包括了考量装置私有云解决方案
（Private Cloud Solutions）和“软件即服务”产品（简称SaaS）。
“我们一直密切关注这些趋势和科技为我们带来的商业效益。作为一家财务机构，在装置任何云端解决方案之前，我们将会严禁审核相关的安全考量事项。”陈国麟表示。
对于大东方人寿而言，拥有能够提供完整保护解决方案和稳健供应商支援非常重要，这样才能确保资讯科技安全管理、数据隐私管理和储存管理扩充性的有效运作，这是因为
公司一直不断成长并站在引领保险业界的前沿地位。
大东方人寿装置的赛门铁克解决方案产品:
Symantec Control Compliance Suite
Symantec Protection Suite
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Veritas CommandCentral Storage
Veritas Storage Foundation
Symantec NetBackup
Symantec NetBackup Data Protection Optimization
Symantec Ops Center Analytics
Symantec Endpoint Encryption Removable Storage
Symantec Encryption Management Server/PGP Universal Server
Symantec Drive Encryption/Whole Disk Encryption
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