Sygate chosen by British American Tobacco to protect its corporate client devices

Amersham, UK, 02 December 2004 – Sygate, the endpoint security market leader announces today that it has been chosen by British American Tobacco (BAT) to protect its MS Windows based client devices from worms, Trojans and hackers.

In the latest of Sygate’s many enterprise-wide deployments at global customers, the Sygate Secure Enterprise (SSE) solution will be installed onto the machines of over 30,000 users based in 450 sites across 180 countries. The implementation will ensure that all machines connecting to BAT’s corporate network comply with the relevant sections of the company’s IT security policy. With such a large and widely distributed workforce, it is essential for BAT that necessary security measures can be put in place automatically, no matter where the user may be situated at the time.

Gareth Lindahl-Wise, global client technology strategy manager at BAT, said: “We recognised that traditional network perimeters were vanishing at the same time as the requirement for mobility in the workforce was growing. It was clear that this meant we had to take a far more proactive approach to our security requirements. Firewalls were simply not effective at offering the protection required, and, as with many large organisations, keeping up to date with patching is proving to be a challenge.

“The logical choice for such a large organisation as BAT was to look at host based security options, and Sygate’s Secure Enterprise met all our criteria. It has the functionality and scalability we need, and allows us to ensure that our security control objectives are met in a consistent way.”

Ian Schenkel, EMEA MD at Sygate said: “The ability to centrally manage the security of all devices, whether mobile or office-based, is crucial for an organisation on BAT’s scale. With so many threats in the wild even small lapses in patch management or anti-virus updates cause a window of vulnerability that can result in disaster. By choosing the SSE solution, BAT can protect its devices without relying on its users, and free up its IT team’s valuable time so that they can focus on activities that add value where it counts – the business’s bottom line.”

About Sygate Technologies, Inc.
Sygate is the market leader of endpoint security solutions for the large enterprise. Using Sygate Secure Enterprise, the world’s largest organisations protect their networks, enforce business policies, and automate security practices to regain control of network security, reduce costs, and ensure compliance across the organisation. Partnerships with industry leaders, including Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Juniper Networks, Aventail, Nortel, Enterasys, Extreme Networks, and iPass, enable Sygate’s technology to operate seamlessly across multiple platforms and applications. Sygate Technologies is a privately held company headquartered in Fremont, California. For more information, please visit www.sygate.com.


About British American Tobacco
British American Tobacco is the world’s second largest quoted tobacco group. With more than 300 brands in our portfolio, we make the cigarette chosen by one in seven of the world’s one billion adult smokers. We hold robust market positions in each of our regions and have leadership in more than 50 of the 180 markets where we do business. The Group has 87 factories in 66 countries, processing some 660 million kilos of leaf and producing some 792 billion cigarettes in 2003. Our companies, including associated companies, employ more than 85,000 people worldwide.

Don't miss