Global Oil & Gas Case Study

Challenges

Given that a large number of the key workers within the company are global travellers and the sensitivity of the day-to-day conversations, the customer had legitimate concerns about the confidentiality of information communicated using smartphones and tablets. In some areas of the world the customer was concerned about rogue telecommunications operators intercepting calls as well as the widespread use of consumer based communications apps while on insecure networks in hotels, airports and coffee shops.

The business embraced BYOD after an attempt to introduce specialized encrypted phones failed due to the phones being unreliable and the lack of engagement from the users given the burden of managing a second device.

The company knew that it had to take control of its communications. Public leaks damage brands and impact stock prices while private leaks to competitors result in lost business.

Selection Criteria

The company needed a solution to provide secure global mobile communications for key employees as they exchange very sensitive business information.

The selection criteria were set out as follows:

The highest grade open-source encryption technologies available for end to end communications on mobile devices.

The solution would need to integrate with their existing BYOD policy.

The ability to have central control of the closed contact list for each user, outside of the device’s own address book.

Fast deployment to new users requiring private communications while out of country.

Solution

The Trial

The company trialled the system for 14 days with ten users using a mix of iOS and Android devices. The users were deliberately chosen to be spread geographically. A dedicated account was created and the company’s IT Manager took control of the portal to allow him to provision the initial users. The ten users were split between three groups (or circles), each of which included several of the decision makers and influencers. The feedback from users across the globe was that the system was “simple to use” and offered “excellent voice quality”.

The Deployment

The company chose to deploy the live system on premise in their Houston based data center. After a 45 minute consultation with the SaltDNA team the IT Manager was able to download and deploy the system within the vSphere infrastructure within the corporate DMZ. A few hours later, after some tweaks to the configuration to meet the security constraints of the customer’s network, the system was fully up and running.

Benefits

Immediate uptake by end users removed a major area of concern for the executive management team. The company’s CIO said:

“It is a reliable and simple to use service. More and more users rely on SaltDNA to make faster decisions and exchange information related to our high value deals. We plan to roll SaltDNA across all business units and use it when dealing with our external partners also”.