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Hornbill Saves IT Management Time with Bloxx

Company Background

Hornbill Systems delivers market-leading Service Management solutions that enable organisations to automate business processes and provide first-class customer service.

Drawing on over a decade of experience, Hornbill has packaged a number of applications designed for rapid deployment within any employee or customer service support environment.

The Challenge

Hornbill has a very flexible Internet usage policy and before Bloxx it had no web filtering solution in place and was relying on its firewall to block inappropriate content and produce usage reports.

“Before we deployed Bloxx, we were manually exporting web usage data directly from our firewall,” said David Liddle, IT Manager at Hornbill.

“This was extremely time-consuming for the IT team and in addition the reports could not provide us with the detail on staff Internet usage we were looking for.”

“We needed a solution that would effectively block adult material and other inappropriate content but would allow us to easily and effectively monitor and report on staff Internet usage.”

The Solution

After reviewing a number of different solutions, Hornbill selected the Bloxx web filtering appliance.

The company felt that the Bloxx appliance would provide the detailed level of reporting it required on Internet usage, reduce IT management time and provide a much more effective way to manage its network.

Bloxx web filtering provides up-to-the-minute web protection for users and uses Tru-View Tecchnology to analyze, categorise and block/allow access to web pages instantly, depending on the user’s access policy.

Comprehensive Reporting tools come as standard on Bloxx appliances to help IT Teams easily analyze user web use.

Bloxx provides additional protection against viruses, spyware and phishing sites as well as blocking IM and P2P applications and file downloads.

Results

From the initial installation of Bloxx web filtering, Hornbill Systems realised that Bloxx suited its network. Hornbill has an unusual network topology and Bloxx was able to operate without defining a proxy for each client – which few other competing products offered.

Liddle was particularly impressed with Bloxx’s reporting functionality:

“The nice thing about Bloxx is that you can export the data and integrate it into a reporting portal. We consult our reports weekly; it’s part of our Management Portal. The information is very easy to access and can be easily integrated into our systems – we find this a key benefit of Bloxx.”

“Bloxx has definitely made my job easier. I no longer spend nearly as much time conducting analysis of user Internet activity as most of the processes are automated by the Bloxx web filter,” enthuses Liddle.

Installing Bloxx into its network has made Hornbill staff more aware of the company’s Acceptable Internet Use policy. As Hornbill staff are technical employees working on Service Desk Software, the staff needed more flexible access. However, they know that if they abuse the web, Managers will know about it and their access will be restricted.

Liddle is confident Bloxx will benefit the company in the future:

“Although we’ve only recently installed Bloxx, I believe in the future Bloxx will save us money and resources as I will be able to dedicate my time to other, more important areas.”

“We have been particularly impressed by the post-sales support from Bloxx and the additional features such as Anti-Phishing and Anti-Virus. This adds more layers of protection for our network meaning we can catch this stuff early.”