News
Scout24 Selected ForeScout CounterACT™ for Greater Convenience and More Security in Network Management
February 2015 by Marc Jacob
ForeScout Technologies, Inc., a provider of continuous monitoring and mitigation solutions for Global 2000 enterprises and government organisations, today announced that Scout24 has now deployed ForeScout CounterACT™. This solution provides Scout24 with greater visibility and enhanced efficiency in endpoint management within Scout24’s network – especially with regard to BYOD - and also simplifies and automates the administration of external endpoints.
Scout24 operates leading digital classified platforms in Germany and other selected European countries. The ImmobilienScout24 and AutoScout24 digital marketplaces comprise the core business under the umbrella brand Scout24. ImmobilienScout24 is the leading digital marketplace in the real-estate field in Germany, both in terms of the number of users and their loyalty, as well as according to the number of clients and their advertisements. AutoScout24 is Europe’s largest portal for automobile advertisements as measured by the total number of monthly unique users and their advertisements.
ForeScout’s CounterACT optimised Scout24’s already highly differentiated IT infrastructure, CounterACT, because CounterACT integrates smoothly with existing systems, “We were very surprised by the majority of existing integrations,” says Markus Prahl, team lead of Corporate IT at Scout24. “Whether it’s our wired and wireless architecture from Cisco, antivirus from TrendMicro or the MDM from MobileIron, the continuous monitoring and mitigation platform from ForeScout provides integrations to all of these systems, so data can be shared efficiently and bi-directionally, while enhancing our security posture.”
CounterACT was set up just two months after its purchase and the system went live after a three-month test phase. The solution was configured as a cluster for Scout24 in order to guarantee maximum security in the event of breakdowns. Experts from ForeScout offered precisely the right assistance to Scout24 so the delivered policies could be individually adapted to suit Scout24’s network. This occurred both successfully and smoothly: “Most users didn’t even notice that CounterACT had been integrated. That’s really the best indicator of the functionality of a security system,” Markus Prahl summarises.
With CounterACT, ForeScout sets new standards in continuous monitoring and mitigation—also for the personnel who are responsible for IT at Scout24, because CounterACT offers more transparency and greater convenience—especially with regard to the management of administrated and external endpoints. CounterACT immediately creates an overview of which terminal device is currently active in which network environment—irrespective of what kind of device is being used, because of its agent-free approach. In the past, each terminal device had to be manually assigned to one of the five VLANs, but now CounterACT automatically selects the optimal VLAN, which is much more convenient for the user. Each device is automatically placed in the appropriate network environment depending on the scope of the access rights (member of the board of directors, guest, or developer) and the specific security and compliance rules. There’s a quarantine LAN for peculiarly conspicuous devices, and the reminder to install necessary updates occurs automatically. This package of functionalities distinguishes ForeScout CounterACT as a continuous monitoring and mitigation solution that’s far superior to the black-and-white, “block-or-accept” methodology of yesterday’s NACs.
Working with CounterACT provided Scout24 with three main advantages:
Visibility and transparency for the endpoints on the network
Quick and easy installation, which showed results within the first day of deployment
Simple and secure operation with automated enforcement of flexibly definable rules
