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Waterloo North Hydro distributes hydro-produced electricity to almost 47,000 customers over an area of 673 square kilometers. This makes it one of the largest hydro-electricity distribution areas in Ontario. Established at the beginning of the last century, it is now owned jointly by Ontario's City of Waterloo and the townships of Woolwich and Wellesley.
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The company's production machine is an IBM i5 which runs under V5R3. It serves some 80-100 users of financial applications for which Telnet, client/server applications and FTP are used for access.
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Following the decision to introduce client/server applications and to allow for software vendor application support via FTP, the company decided to acquire an easy-to-use solution for the protection of these TCP/IP applications, which up to then, had been locked down completely.
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This would also represent a pro-active step towards the operation of a controlled environment and ensure compliance with any privacy laws and regulations which were likely to become demands in the future.
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Darcy Forde, a network analyst 9 years with the company, approached Able-One, a long-standing supplier of Waterloo North Hydro. Darcy wanted a tried and tested network security product having first class support and which was also easy to use. Able-One strongly recommended Bsafe/Global Security, a solution they had experience with for some years.
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Darcy prefers to handle all software products under his control in a ‘hands-on' fashion and the installation and implementation of Bsafe/Global Security was no exception. Knowing in advance how he wanted to setup restriction and permissions, he went through the process quickly with just an occasional question for Able-One.
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The most notable use of the product at Waterloo North Hydro is in controlling network access. Darcy spends little more than an hour a month administering Bsafe, mostly reviewing reports/logs and making minor adjustments. He finds the product easy to work with and likes the way it handles object authority.
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The Bsafe/Global Security product at Waterloo North has since been upgraded to Bsafe/Enterprise Security, a newer version of Global Security. Darcy says that the application can be used efficiently to control access of third party applications. He feels a clear return on investment in the saving of administration time and in his overall sense of security.
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