SAN JOSE, Calif. and TOKYO, Sept. 25, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pulse Secure, the leading provider of Secure Access solutions to both enterprises and service providers, today announced that Ricoh Group has successfully deployed Pulse Access Suite Enterprise Edition to enhance secure access for always-on network connectivity protecting approximately 97,000 employees worldwide.
Ricoh Group is a global provider of technology that transforms business processes and information management to help organizations be more agile, productive and profitable. Ricoh is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan with operations in over 200 countries.
Following a series of WannaCry cyberattacks in 2017 against high-profile companies that led to the disclosure of personal information, senior executives began a strategic project across the Group to implement additional security measures to further strengthen network controls.
“Sales operations and engineers often visit customers and they increasingly need to remotely access company servers,” explains Mr. Hiroyuki Suzuki, director of Security Operations and leader of network management for the Ricoh Group. “In addition, we also anticipate a rapid increase in demand for access via telework and home offices as part of our ongoing Workstyle Innovation program.”
To provide safe network connectivity for employees, the security operations division reviewed its infrastructure to look at ways it could strengthen its overall security posture. As Mr. Tomotake Wakuri, from the Security Operations Division explains, “We looked at firewall products with built-in VPN features, but when we took the increase in the number of simultaneous connections into consideration, we decided it was better to separate them. As a result, we reached the conclusion that as a leader of the industry, Pulse Secure was appropriate in terms of both performance and capacity.”
Ricoh has deployed Pulse Access Suite Enterprise Edition at data centers in Tokyo and Osaka along with Pulse Secure license servers to aid flexible deployment of security resources. Pulse Access Suite includes Pulse Policy Secure to deliver Network Access Control (NAC) with granular policy enforcement and integrated management capabilities.
The new Pulse Secure VPN and Network Access Control (NAC) solution allows Ricoh to maintain 5,000 simultaneous connections per location to support secure access for 10,000 sales employees and around 4,000 support engineers spread across multiple times zones. The solution includes local host device validation to ensure connecting devices have required OS patches and active anti-malware protection. Through the simplicity and reliability of the Pulse Secure solution, Ricoh has also moved its previously outsourced VPN management and maintenance functions back in-house leading to a 60 percent reduction in its secure network access budget.
Mr. Tomotake Wakuri adds, “Now that we use Pulse Secure’s products, we are extremely pleased that we are at the point where a simple and secure connection can be achieved just by downloading a client from the web.”
The use of Pulse Cloud Secure with its secure access and single sign-on to cloud apps and services has also helped Ricoh deliver on its “Work Reform” program and group-wide migration to Microsoft Office 365. With Pulse Secure, Ricoh has created a secure environment in which employees can access IT resources from anywhere using a wider variety of devices.
Mr. Hiroyuki Suzuki adds, “Global cyberattacks typified by WannaCry also occur in Japan, and high-profile companies were victims. With the deployment of Pulse Secure, I believe that the biggest benefit of deployment has been that we are now able to create standard criteria for security requirements so that we can reject unsafe connections.”
A full case study of the Pulse Secure deployment at Ricoh Group is available here.
About Pulse Secure
Pulse Secure, LLC offers easy, comprehensive Secure Access solutions that provide visibility and seamless, protected connectivity between users, devices, things and services. The company delivers suites that uniquely integrate cloud, mobile, application and network access to enable hybrid IT. More than 20,000 enterprises and service providers across every vertical entrust Pulse Secure to empower their mobile workforce to securely access applications and information in the data center and cloud while ensuring business compliance. Learn more at www.pulsesecure.net.
Media Contact:
Deb Montner
Montner Tech PR (PR for Pulse Secure in North America)
1-203-226-9290
dmontner@montner.com