Financial Firm Exchanges VPN for Scalable Zero Trust Access

Perimeter 81 helps leading financial firm fight off VPN productivity issues with a more scalable cloud-based remote access solution.

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With the Perimeter 81 solution, it’s been a relief to know that our employees’ connections are secure and strong. Just the idea that their remote office is stable and that they have access to what they need to do for their jobs has helped me and our employees be more productive without the issues we usually encounter.

Lead IT Manager

The Company

A US-based financial company providing fund administration and outsourced finance and accounting services. The organization offers a team of CPAs customer-tailored for venture capital firms and small private equities.

Website:

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Industry:

Finance

Location:

New York, NY

Employees:

51–200

Customer since:

2019

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Solution Highlights

Two-hour immediate network deployment

500% reduction in monthly hours of manual work

Increased employee productivity

The Challenge

Like many companies, this financial institution didn’t have many employees working remotely before COVID-19. However, for the few employees working on the go, the previous Enterprise VPN, Cisco AnyConnect created productivity challenges.

“We had a VPN client which never had more than a couple of users connecting to it at a time. On different occasions, we would experience that when more than two users would be connected to the VPN, it would compete with the firewall on our network which created connection issues and likely security risks. Additionally, we started to see more Cloud VPN connections dropping, especially when we brought in outsourced vendors.

Besides VPN issues, the company needed a more scalable solution. As part of the finance industry, it is common to see employees come and go. This created a headache for the IT team as, with their previous solution, they needed to buy a set amount of licenses without knowing if some of the licenses would actually be used.

“We have a flow of people coming and going and it’s a pain when we know we have to buy 30 licenses, even with only 25 employees, and we would always end up purchasing more licenses that wouldn’t be used.”

Why Perimeter 81

When shopping in the network security market to replace their Business VPN, the experience of their CISO played a major role in deciding to go with Perimeter 81.

“Our CISO had previously deployed Perimeter 81 with one of his other clients who had many employees working remotely. He highly recommended the ease of setup and how the solution integrates seamlessly. Additionally, the inclusion of Zero Trust features ensured that we’d be covered from all sides. We did some due diligence around it and it just seemed to make sense for us.”

More than Zero Trust features, the company needed a solution that offered a single sign-on (SSO) function that was easily implemented. “The flexibility and strength of Perimeter 81’s single sign-on feature helped me as the lead IT Manager to have more confidence in the security of our employees. Anytime that we can avoid having users manage 27 different passwords for multiple applications, it’s a bonus for security.”

Perimeter 81’s scalability played a key factor in how easy it was for the company to adjust security to business growth. “Having the option to easily scale the number of licenses on a person by person basis was key in why we went with Perimeter 81.”

The Results:

Smooth Remote Connections

In place of their older hosted VPN which lagged and caused connection errors, the leading IT manager is very happy with the connection speed and time that Perimeter 81 has provided to the company’s remote workforce. “The steady, reliable connection time via the Perimeter 81 platform is the biggest benefit so far. There is no thought that employee productivity might be impacted, whether from dropped connections, high latency or slow speeds that make access to large files problematic.”

Quick and Easy Gateway Deployment

Quick gateway deployment is a key benefit that comes with Perimeter 81. For the company, they have been very happy with the speedy network deployment time within the platform. “Deployment time was pretty immediate, and I think for us to get it set up initially took maybe two hours, or three hours max. It certainly wasn’t a long process which I am very happy with. Compared to other products that we have adopted, Perimeter 81’s deployment was faster and easier to complete.”

Time Savings

When looking for solutions to replace outdated network security products, IT managers and management will consider how much time and money the new solution can save. In the company’s case, Perimeter 81 has helped save time and headaches in maintaining and fixing their previous Corporate VPN solution. ”Overall, what Perimeter 81 has saved me most is time. I can troubleshoot the entire workforce’s connections via the Perimeter 81 platform to see if everyone is connected, monitor proactively and work on long-term security projects. Thanks to Perimeter 81, on a monthly basis I am saving over 5 hours of manual work and instead I can use that time to do other tasks.”