Private IT security on a private cloud

The client

The Hungarian-owned Vision-Software Group has been developing and operating its customers’ ERP and e-commerce systems for more than 25 years. The Octopus 8 ERP enterprise resource planning system, an integrated web store, virtualization and value-added IT services and consulting are among the main services. The daily turnover of the e-commerce stores served by the group amounts to a quarter of a billion forints.

The IT manager

Tamás Tábor is an IT manager with a degree in IT engineering. He started working with Vision-Software more than 20 years ago, where his main task is to ensure the trouble-free remote operation of customers’ critical applications and data protection.

They market proven systems

The Vision-Software IT team’s philosophy is to offer and sell IT systems to its customers that they themselves use on a daily basis and are familiar with. These include the in-house developed Octopus 8 ERP system and the Andrews ALF virtualized firewall. The company not only sells these systems but also operates them for its customers, alongside almost their entire IT infrastructure. Vision-Software is responsible for their customers’ data, IT systems and change management.

Andrews’ ALF virtualized firewall and support service has also become one of the trusted solutions that Vision-Software offers to its customers. How did this happen exactly? Find out here!

Vision-Software launched its private cloud solution in 2017, running customers’ IT systems in addition to the Octopus 8 ERP system. This solution was upgraded in 2021 based on operational experience. At that time, the idea of replacing the existing IT security solution was also raised. Although the old solution was doing its job, log analysis and alarms could not be handled at the desired level.

How we became a trusted partner

The company has been using the Andrews ALF firewall to protect its IT systems for over 15 years. In addition to the firewall solution, Andrews’ experts have implemented a virtual server environment based on VMWare. Based on the trust and expertise gained over many years of collaboration, it was decided that Vision-Software would also entrust us, Andrews, with the protection of its own customers. Thank you!

An instructive joint work

Working together has been a learning experience for both sides. “Continuity of operations is critical for our customers, while at the same time we cannot forget about the security of our systems, also on a cloud basis. When we approached Andrews with our ideas, we were surprised to find that they already had a virtualized firewall solution, only in a Linux environment. The Windows virtualized ALF firewall, which works in a Windows-based environment, was developed together over a five-week period,” recalls Tamás Tábor.

The basic cloud firewall system was first tested in a test environment. This was followed by a live test with one or two customers, where the coordinated operation of the cloud systems was further refined. Despite a lot of testing, there were still some services that did not work due to the tighter security environment, but they worked together to solve the problems.

The advantage of a virtualized ALF firewall base system is that it can grow with Vision-Software. It is easily scalable when deploying to multiple customers, but also when adding additional functionality on top of the base system to meet changing IT security needs.

“The result is increased IT security, but what is priceless is peace of mind. We have done our best to protect our customers, but we are much more reassured, as responsible operators, that they are protected by a more rigorous system, backed by a team of professionals who constantly monitor logs and manage alerts, proactively preventing any trouble,” concluded Tamás Tábor. Thank you for your trust!