How one company used Barracuda’s SASE platform to speed and secure business operations

Ionbond is a globally distributed supply chain firm that makes specialized plastic coatings and custom components. And because of its client list—including “big names” in aerospace, healthcare, automotive, and more—a lot of the data they store is highly sensitive proprietary information that they need to protect at all costs. 

Cyber attacks had been rising for years, and Benedict Groppe, the company’s Head of IT was determined to upgrade Ionbond’s global network infrastructure. Not only was it getting harder to secure effectively, but day-to-day management had grown too complex. Groppe’s team of 7 was responsible for 1,500 devices and 70 servers scattered in data centers around the globe.

As detailed in the complete Ionbond Barracuda case study, Groppe’s search for a solution to streamline and secure their networks soon had them looking at Barracuda.

“We explained the challenges I was facing and that we wanted to use Azure as a network backbone. They presented us with the SecureEdge product and I immediately fell in love with it.” —Benedict Groppe, Head of IT, Ionbond

Full-featured SASE platform

Barracuda SecureEdge is a comprehensive SASE platform that combines advanced threat protection, intrusion prevention, and other next-gen security features with secure SD-WAN connectivity and Zero Trust Access. And it’s all controlled via a single cloud-based web console. 

Groppe and his team purchased and deployed more than 40 SecureEdge devices and delivered them to sites around the world. Zero Touch Deployment meant that they could be plugged in and would automatically connect to the SecureEdge Platform management console and self-install the right configuration file—no on-site technician needed. 

“From the first day we deployed them it was a flawless experience and gave us exactly what we were looking for.” —Benedict Groppe, Head of IT, Ionbond

They immediately saw business benefits in the form of reduced latency, a much improved user experience, and significantly lower management overhead. 

“We are using a lot of SD-WAN capabilities to route the traffic for our ERP system. The ERP system was unresponsive and hardly usable. Since deployment of SecureEdge and Azure all Ionbond offices can now work from the central ERP system.” —Benedict Groppe, Head of IT, Ionbond

“Before I had three people working on network infrastructure just to maintain a global network of firewalls and Azure, and now it’s just one person. The guys now have more time to take care of other things.”—Benedict Groppe, Head of IT, Ionbond

And there are direct financial savings: by eliminating the need for costly MPLS lines to service centers in Asia, Ionbond cut those costs by 90%.

Get the full story on SASE benefits

Be sure to read the full case study to get all the details about how SecureEdge helped Groppe and his team streamline their network operations. Find out how they’re implementing Zero Trust, leveraging AI to mitigate impersonation and account takeover, balancing and optimizing bandwidth and ISP use across the network, integrating seamlessly with SIEM systems, and more. And see why they chose Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup to protect all their data stored in Microsoft 365.