Pepperweed Consulting Consolidates Backup and Security With Symantec

Symantec Corp. announced that Pepperweed Consulting has replaced two separate backup and recovery solutions with Symantec Backup Exec, and implemented Symantec Endpoint Protection to protect business information from malware outbreaks and improve its backups.

Pittsburgh-based Pepperweed Consulting provides HP software and solutions to businesses and government organizations, with a specialty in providing employees with ‘secret’ or higher clearance to Federal agencies. Prior to implementing Symantec Backup Exec, Pepperweed was running an online, hosted backup solution for its 80 employees’ desktops and laptops, and a tape-based system for its data center servers and systems.

"The hosted solution was slow, very difficult to recover data, and our backup success rate was poor," said Joe LaGrosse, director of IT, Pepperweed Consulting. "The backup solution in our data center was more efficient, but it did not handle long-term backups well and became too expensive as our data volumes grew."

Pepperweed’s workforce is highly mobile and relies on Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange to communicate and collaborate. So the company implemented Backup Exec to backup Exchange and SharePoint data, including information on remote users’ laptops and desktops, some of whom work in secure locations where VPN connections to the Backup Exec server are not always available.

"We have to be flexible because some of our people are working in situations where they’re not permitted to have access or working with virtual machines items that are large files," said LaGrosse. "Our employees don’t even know Backup Exec is running, and now our backup success rates are greater than 90 percent. I have 100 percent confidence that if a machine goes away or I need to issue a new one, I can retrieve the data onto that machine."

Pepperweed plans to implement Backup Exec’s integrated archiving and deduplication capabilities in early 2011.

No Successful Malware Attacks
To help protect business information against ever-evolving Internet security threats, Pepperweed upgraded from Symantec Client Security to Symantec Endpoint Protection, which integrates several essential security technologies in a single agent and management console. Pepperweed is running both 32-bit and 64-bit version of Symantec Endpoint Protection and deploys specific technologies such as antivirus, antispyware, proactive threat protection, network threat protection, network access control and firewall depending on the needs of a specific server or workstation.

"We have had zero outbreaks or uncorrectable issues on machines with Symantec Endpoint Protection," said LaGrosse. "We’re able to deploy and manage a number of endpoint security technologies from one console without our users having to endure any performance issues or interruptions of their work."