OLFA Corporation is a manufacturing company of handheld cutting tools. It develops, manufactures and sells safe utility knives. Founded in Osaka, Japan in 1956, the company ensures functionality through its high technical capabilities and by developing products with the users. OLFA’s products are designed, developed, and manufactured entirely in Japan to guarantee stringent quality checks across all areas of operation.

The Business Challenge

OLFA Corporation is known for its invention of the snap-off blade and rotary cutter. Its products heavy-duty, specialty cutting tools used in the building industry, safety tools for industrial applications, and the crafting industry leveraged its rotary cutters, self-healing mats, art knives and rulers.

Most of OLFA’s employees have to travel abroad to develop the company’s overseas business. Thus, requests from these employees to access their email in the same environment impelled the company to deploy Office 365. However, the implementation of Office 365 led to an increase in traffic, which causes network latency that hindered business operations. So, OLFA needed a solution that can address and enhance security without compromising bandwidth.

The Solution: OLFA Corporation Leveraged Solutions Delivered by Symantec

To ensure network security that can address OLFA’s business challenges, Symantec delivered Web Security Service (WSS). It is a cloud-delivered network security service that imposes comprehensive internet security and data compliance policies, regardless of location or device.

WSS has myriad features including it can enhance the security of HTTPS communication and real-time URL filtering, and can deliver security measures as good as or even better than gateways.

OLFA’s Workstyle reform had led to more access from outside the company, however, as WSS is a cloud service, the company can maintain security for such access. Previously, employees of the company who were on overseas business trips connected to the internet without passing through a gateway. But with Symantec, their laptops for use outside the company have a WSS agent installed, allowing users to connect to the internet with security measures intact, even while on the go.

Symantec Web Security Service also had significant effects on OLFA’s operations. Before its implementation, gateway settings for each location were separately entered and managed in an Excel file, which had to be checked every time any settings were changed. However, WSS, on the other hand, provides a list of this information on its cloud-based management screen that has significantly reduced operation burdens and makes IT management much simpler.

The Outcomes

After leveraging Web Security Service (WSS) from Symantec, OLFA Corporations sees several benefits, including enhanced security while maintaining bandwidth, without compromising convenience; implemented smoothly and quickly, and equipped with an easy-to-use management console that significantly lessens operational burden; integrated management allowed easy configuration for individual locations and granular department-based control; and connected to several data centers to provide a stable environment.