Why did a major UK auto dealer choose Barracuda email and web security?

I often write about the latest cutting-edge advances in cybersecurity technology and how they help manage the incredible complexity of securing modern, cloud-connected networks and applications against a tide of highly sophisticated threats.

But a lot of mid-sized brick-and-mortar companies with a relatively limited dependence on technology — and limited IT resources — face more basic, common challenges: Too much wasted bandwidth, too many email attacks, too much time spent by IT personnel responding to incidents.

John Clark Motor Group — a family-run group of 37 car dealerships across Scotland — is a typical example, and I thought it would be useful to many our readers to highlight their journey. I expect that a lot of you will relate to the challenges they faced and the ways that they overcame them.

Barraged by email attacks

According to the company’s head of IT, Stewart Herd, their exposure to email threats was becoming difficult to manage. The McAfee email gateway that they were using to protect their on-premises Microsoft Exchange email system was simply not blocking enough of the many targeted phishing attacks that they were being hit with.

“Before Barracuda we were having to clean up half a dozen infected PCs each month, taking them off the network and rebuilding them from scratch to get rid of the virus, but that’s unheard of now,” says Herd in a recent case study.

Herd and his team looked into alternative solutions and decided to invest in a Barracuda email security appliance — and thanks to its advanced threat protection and AI-based anti-phishing capabilities, they basically eliminated the email threat problems they’d been dealing with. The team no longer had to spend time rebuilding PCs, and could instead devote that time to more important IT initiatives to support the business.

Transitioning to the cloud

Like vast numbers of other mid-sized companies, John Clark Motor Group soon came to see the value of migrating their email to the cloud by transitioning from on-premises email to Microsoft 365. And they decided to stay with Barracuda, this time choosing a cloud-based Barracuda Email Protection plan.

Not only did this decision ensure the continuity of the excellent email security they were already enjoying, but it also included the powerful Cloud-to-Cloud Backup module. “One of the worries with Microsoft 365 is there’s no built-in backup as such, so there’s always a risk you’ll lose all of your data, and we have to keep seven years’ worth for compliance reasons,” says Herd.

Herd and his team also decided that it was a good time to address the growing problem of too much bandwidth being wasted by users on non-productive web browsing — not to mention the security threat posed by uncontrolled access to corrupted and malicious websites. Barracuda Content Shield gave them the protection they needed and the ability to apply granular controls to how users could access the web.

Get all the details

To get all the details about how John Clark Motor Group addressed their email security, backup, and bandwidth challenges with Barracuda’s help, get the full case study. It’s a great illustration of how Barracuda solutions can help ordinary mid-size businesses in addressing their everyday IT challenges.