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Clarks is a global shoe manufacturing and retail company with more than 1,400 stores in 75 countries. With a complex IT network across manufacturing, distribution, retail, and the ever-increasing rise in cybercrime, Clarks took a proactive approach to secure its networks against the next generation of sophisticated cyber-attacks. Previously, the complexity of management across multiple solutions had made maintaining and managing policies significantly more difficult.

When a new in-house IT team came on board, Clarks adopted a consolidated end-to-end strategy with Check Point Software’s Infinity architecture for more robust security functionality, simplified management, and better visibility over its security architecture.

"We already had a great relationship with Check Point Software, and that made our decision easy. We opted for Check Point Quantum Security Gateways as they allow us to consolidate and simplify our security operations,” said Dan Fletcher, Network Service Manager at Clarks. “We now have increased the overall level of protection, while also reducing the work needed to manage security policies and rules by more than 50%.”

"The URL filtering has been especially useful. It detects and prevents web access security events, and SSL inspection technology scans and secures SSL/TLS encrypted traffic,” explained Paul Davey, Infrastructure Service Specialist at Clarks. “As a result, we were able to eliminate seven internet proxies we were using around the world."

Check Point Software consolidated Clarks’ security infrastructure to provide automated defenses across its organization. Clarks also gained full protection against all kinds of cyberattacks, even the most sophisticated fifth generation (Gen V) attacks that are multi-vector. The Check Point Software solutions that the company deployed included:

● Seven Check Point Quantum Security Gateway clusters defend the company’s global footprint and provide ultra-scalable protection against Gen V cyber-attacks. The advanced threat prevention technologies included firewall, IPS, Anti-Bot, Antivirus, Application Control, and URL Filtering. As the pandemic unfolded, Quantum remote access VPN made it easy for the team to quickly and securely connect 600 remote users per day (the previous system only allowed for 200 users in total.)

● Check Point CloudGuard Network Security to secure cloud-based solutions in minutes. Check Point’s industry-leading advanced threat protection and single-pane-of-glass management makes it easy for Clarks to ensure consistent, comprehensive security protections across its estate. The Check Point team used CloudGuard Network Security to set up a virtual hub in Azure, providing secure connectivity between the data center and cloud.

● Check Point Infinity Unified Management to provide unified visibility of Clarks’ entire network environment — enabling easy and flexible policy management, enterprise-wide configuration and deployment, and consolidation. Furthermore, multiple security administrators can modify policies simultaneously for highly efficient and agile policy management.

● Check Point Harmony Endpoint for complete endpoint protection and automated attack detection and remediation (EDR). Harmony Endpoint handles URL filtering on the endpoint, giving users much better performance while Check Point Zero-Phishing, AI-based technology identifies and blocks phishing in real time.

● Check Point Quantum SmartEvent event management to provide full threat visibility with a single view into security risks. Including real-time forensics, event investigation, compliance, and reporting.

● Check Point Quantum Compliance to continuously monitor a company’s network security compliance with regulations and security best practices