Toyota Implements Web Monitoring Practices
An effort to free up network resources, minimize security exposures and archive e-mails for future compliance at the trading arm of Toyota Group.
Computerworld Australia — Toyota Tsusho Corporation Australasia, the billion-dollar-a-year trading arm of Toyota Group, has deployed Web access management and antispam solutions to reduce wasted network resources and employee productivity.
The company is a multi-enterprise business that combines international trading with domestic functions such as supply chain services, intermediate goods processing and logistics. The business is most active in vehicle parts and machinery, metals, industrial materials, and life products and services.
The MailMarshal and WebMarshal solutions were deployed across the companies' six Australian offices and have detected 97 percent of incoming spam from the 4,000 e-mails the company receives daily, while about 10 percent of the total is quarantined for user evaluation.
Toyota Tsusho Australasia IT Manager Ashleigh Martin said the company needed to free up network resources, minimize security risks and exposures, and archive inbound and outbound e-mails for future compliance. "We needed to identify and monitor staff Web browsing to protect our assets from malicious Web content, and it was also important to limit nonbusiness-related activities like downloading MP3s and movies that consume bandwidth and storage capacity," Martin said.
Martin chose the solution because of its reporting capabilities that can be shared across sites, its real-time Web censorship feature and e-mail archival capabilities.
"The reporting capabilities mean we can identify when and why someone is spending a lot of time on the Internet by looking at their usage patterns," she said, adding that McAfee Web censor is effective enough in blocking phishing and spyware that a third-party plug-in is not required.
The company has increased e-mail archiving periods from six months to three years in a pre-emptive move to meet future compliance regulations and is also investigating IM access controls and protection.
Martin said she will continue to adjust the company's mail handling and Web usage policies as new security threats and business requirements evolve, such as the migration of its vital automotive and trading systems to a Web-based environment.
