ACCOR HOTELS CHOOSES MCAFEE NEXT-GENERATION FIREWALL FOR SECURE CONNECTIONS WORLDWIDE

SINGAPORE, Dec. 24, 2013 – McAfee today announced that Accor, one of the largest hotel groups in the world, has chosen its next-generation firewall (NGFW) for the protection and continuity of their IT systems. McAfee’s NGFW is the market-leading product from Stonesoft, which was recently acquired by McAfee to enhance its network security portfolio. McAfee NGFW provides unified, modular and flexible network security for every enterprise environment from corporate headquarters and branch sites to data centers and the network edge.

Accor, the world's leading hotel operator and market leader in Europe, is present in 92 countries with nearly 3,600 hotels and 460,000 rooms. Accor's broad portfolio of hotel brands includes Sofitel, Pullman, MGallery, Novotel, Suite Novotel, Mercure, Adagio, ibis, ibis Styles, ibis budget and hotelF1. With more than 160,000 employees in Accor brand hotels worldwide, the company’s network is highly distributed, requiring a strong security solution that’s easy to set up and manage.

“I firmly believe that our IT-based business processes are in the best of hands thanks to the comprehensive and cost-effective security technology platform provided by McAfee’s Stonesoft technology,” said Serge Saghroune, CISO of Accor. “Over the years our confidence has grown because of the excellent level of support and resilient cyber security protection they provide. We trust our next-generation firewall solution and its ability to meet our future security needs.”

The major challenge faced by Accor when they decided to launch their global firewall bid was to ensure continuous secure service while keying in the future development of the hospitality business. ‘Everything as a service’ and the integration of greater bandwidth, full Wi-Fi and mobile applications are part of the evolution, and criteria such as firewall robustness, smart management and ease of deployment were identified as imperatives within this context. The worldwide project involved more than 2,000 sites. The deployment of McAfee NGFW, launched in 2013, will be completed in 18 months.

Accor now benefits from the enhanced management capabilities offered by Stonesoft’s unique centralised console. The best-of-breed encryption functionality ensures secure connections, while at the same time QoS features work to maintain the high availability of the Accor information system. In addition, Stonesoft Service Level Agreements (SLA) also provide unmatched solution support.

“In 2010, the first Stonesoft firewalls were deployed by Accor in France and since then, the dynamic nature of our solutions to meet the latest network security requirements has ensured our staying and growing power,” said Léonard Dahan, Country Manager of Stonesoft France, who first worked with Accor on defining their needs. “We are proud to have been selected for this wide-scale implementation of our NGFW technology with one of the premiere hotel groups in the world today.”