Home About Us Products Case Studies News Support Contact

Home > Case Studies > PacketiX VPN Case Study: Yomiuri TV

Case Study: PacketiX VPN

Secure Intranet access for field reporters abroad

Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation

---

Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation is a TV broadcaster in Osaka, part of Nippon Television Network Corporation (NTV). For its news program, the station mainly brings stories from the Kansai area (West Japan), but it also has overseas correspondents who gather news from all over the world. To allow its reporters easy access to the company intranet for sending in their manuscripts, Yomiuri TV introduced the software PacketiX VPN on the laptops of its reporters.

Reasons for choosing PacketiX

Yomiuri TV's reporters are located in many places around the globe. They use different means to access the internet, reaching from the public PCs at a press club, to local networks at overseas offices and mobile devices for direct on-site reports. As Mr. Sekioka, Yomiuri TV's information system administrator reports, "to administer everything in one single way was a problem of ressources, and a lot of things were just not possible."

For security reasons, PCs which are not under the supervision of the local administrator should not be allowed to freely access the intranet. That is why a separate server was set up for receiving manuscripts.
At first, dial up connections over the mobile phone network were used, but this proved to be impractical for large data files such as photos and videos. Then, they switched to the FOMA (3G) mobile network, which solved the bandwith issue, but phone bills increased sharply. Under these conditions, and considering cost and flexibility, it was a natural choice to establish a VPN using PacketiX VPN.

Mr. Sekioka also has previous experiences with older solutions.

"So far, it didn't work well. You could connect from the Internet, but from within the company it was not accessible. Mostly, the troublemaker were router settings and blocked VPN ports. It felt as if there was a wall."

PacketiX, with its ability to easily overcome routers, NAT and firewalls, offered a solution to this problem.

"It's easy to understand that making it possible to access the company LAN anytime you have access to the Internet was a criterion for our decision."

PC remote administration

Another advantage of choosing PacketiX VPN is remote administration, with the PacketiX Desktop VPN software. If a PC problem occurs in the field, it often can't be solved by the user, even with lengthy explanations on the telephone. It is much easier if the administrator has the option to remotely log into the PC and fix it.

Improved mobile environment

PacketiX VPN was not just introduced because it is easy to administrate, it also improves convenience for the mobile user out in the field. The objective is to offer users who connect from outside the company via the Internet the same environment as within the company.

In addition to anti-virus software and a personal firewall, fingerprint authentication and file encryption were installed as new functions along with PacketiX VPN on the journalists' laptops. Before that, fingerprint authentication was bound to one user per PC. With the introduction of PacketiX VPN, a fingerprint server can be set up to centrally manage user authentication at the company level. This way, users can login no matter which of the laptops they use.

When users surf the web from their laptop, all traffic is routed over the VPN and the company proxy servers. This creates a secure environment integrated into the company intranet. That way, PacketiX VPN combines security policy with convenience.

As a user new to the system stated,

"It has become very convenient because we are able to check the contents of our material after it has been aired. Since we cannot receive Japanese television in many overseas offices, we didn't know how the drafts and materials were put into a story until we came home to Japan. But now, when accessing the intranet with PacketiX VPN, we can check the encoded news contents after a couple of hours."

Security Policy

With the introduction of PacketiX, convenience for users and administrators was improved. But, one has to think about measures to deal with security risks such as lost laptops. At Yomiuri TV, this question has been answered from the three perspectives of software, hardware and the individual user.

"With PacketiX VPN, we didn't have any concerns from the technical side."

as Mr. Sekioka explains. Due the option to select the right encryption with SSL to meet the needs of the application, his trust into the safety of PacketiX is high.

As fingerprint authentication and file encryption was provided by hardware, other users accessing the PC except for the journalist are denied access to important information, so there were also no worries on that side.

For writers using the mobile PCs, authentication by fingerprint is made mandatory. Before handing out the PCs, a fingerprint is taken and instructions are given. This way, an increased security awareness is communicated to the staff.

The introduction of PacketiX VPN by Yomiuri TV is a useful example for companies that consider introducing PacketiX VPN to create secure and convenient network access for outside and home workers.