BACKGROUND Eastern Utah Community Credit Union is a member-driven financial institution that is committed to providing low-cost banking, loan, mortgage and credit card services, online and from four local branches, to members who live, work or have businesses in five Utah counties.

GRADUATING TO ISOLATION’S NEXT GENERATION
EUCCU’s Information Technology Officer, Cole Clarke, CISSP, is a knowledgeable proponent of remote browser isolation technology for all organizations. “I have the same concerns as anyone has who is responsible for defending any network, with the biggest concerns being about internet interactions and email. But as a financial institution, we can’t say, ‘Well, maybe we’ll take a little more risk with that.’ We can’t. We’ve got to make sure that those things are protected.”
As an early adopter of internet isolation and an experienced solution administrator, Mr. Clarke had a clear picture of what he wanted when it was time to renew EUCCU’s previous isolation platform. Following acquisition of the platform by a new provider, however, technology development had slowed and service suffered. EUCCU was no longer getting either the service or the product that it needed.
Mr. Clarke wanted a forward-looking, secure solution that was designed to work with the credit union’s updated infrastructure and would continue to work with emerging cloud infrastructures as well. Beyond technical considerations, he was extremely aware of the importance of user experience. “Users are always negative when they know I am making a change. If new solutions don’t work smoothly when we push them out, people get a negative opinion of them.  I try to keep them as positive as possible, by choosing solutions that align with our workflow and enhance user productivity.”
Most of the internet isolation solutions that Mr. Clarke investigated simply did not deliver the level of performance he required. They rendered content poorly or in some cases, only partially. In addition, users could not use the browsers they liked, but instead were restricted to a solutionspecific browser. As a result, said Mr. Clarke, “the interface felt weird.”

THE SOLUTION: ERICOM SHIELD
While researching alternative solutions, Cole Clarke discovered a review that gave Ericom Shield high marks for secure browsing. He was particularly impressed by the seamless, natural browsing experience that it offers, the ability to restrict secure browsing to uncategorized sites, and the excellent documentation provided on the Ericom site.
Using Ericom Shield’s simple and intuitive management interface, EUCCU easily whitelisted well-known banking and lending sites that are directly business-related and have good reputations, since they can be relied on to have excellent security. And sites categorized as risky by the company’s Fortinet firewall are entirely blacklisted.
While the credit union has a policy of not using the internet for anything other than business reasons, a lot of business reasons put users into gray areas. IT staff uses the Internet to research coding and security. Financial people need to research rates, interact with other financial institutions, and get other information they need for their jobs. That’s where Shield comes into play.
“The reason for wanting Ericom Shield is so that we can stay safe but still allow the flexibility for people to get their work done and do research, versus having to lock down the firewall tight,” said Mr. Clarke. “I can rely on Ericom Shield to keep the credit union secure and still allow people the flexibility to get their jobs done.”
EUCCU users are also pleased with Ericom Shield – when they notice it at all. Mr. Clarke reports that they like it way better than the previous solution. In fact, he added the word “Shield” to their browser tabs so they would know when they are on a site that is Shielded – otherwise they can’t tell the difference from when they browse whitelisted sites.
Said Mr. Clarke, “I’d say this is a very successful implementation. I’ve put in a lot of different systems. Installation and setup of Ericom Shield was super easy, even setting up the Kerberos authentication. Integration with our security stack was smooth. The management interface is great and easy to learn. And the documentation on Ericom’s website is excellent. Support was wonderful too. Whenever I needed more help they always had the answers.”

RESULTS
In the words of Cole Clarke, “Ericom Shield does what it’s supposed to do. I really have no complaints about it at all. It’s doing just what I need it to do.”