Aegean Baltic Bank Secures Financial Data and Remote Workforce with Check Point

“Check Point is a valuable vendor in terms of security solutions and advanced threat protection. Among others, Check Point is also used for the protection of critical environments that require increased security.”
—Antonis Hassiotis, Senior Network Engineer, Aegean Baltic Bank

Overview

Aegean Baltic Bank

Operating under the regulatory supervision of the Central Bank of Greece, Aegean Baltic Bank (AB Bank) focuses on contracting and administration of syndicated loans granted to shipping corporations.

Business Challenge

Security is Fundamental to Banking

Founded in 2002, AB Bank was initially established as a specialized finance provider of bilateral and syndicated loans to the Greek and international shipping and shipping related sectors. Over the years, it expanded its activities offering private, corporate and investment banking products to a wider range of customers, including private clients and businesses.

AB Bank’s main asset is the trust it has built amongst its clientele.

“Security is very important to any financial institution,” said Antonis Hassiotis, Senior Network Engineer at AB Bank. “It’s extremely important for us to safeguard our Bank’s network and its business transacting environment by carefully and closely monitoring all types of attacks spread over the internet.  Any bank’s reputation can be easily damaged if its systems are attacked or transactions are in any way intercepted.  Cyber attacks are the biggest challenge today to by-pass and combat”.

To protect the integrity of its financial transactions, AB Bank uses simple-to-manage solutions that protects its environment and user endpoints from viruses, bots, malicious web sites and other threats.

Solution

Comprehensive Coverage for Financial Services Networking

“AB Bank has deployed a Check Point’s security solution acknowledging the efficiency and trustworthiness of Check Point, who is one of the top vendors for cyber security in the market. The versatile solutions provide maximum protection against unknown threats and zero-day attacks. A full array of integrated security features allows the bank to tailor its security capabilities to its specific needs” said Antonis Hassiotis.

“With the various protection tools that Check Point offers we have increased our security posture” said Yiannis Kanonis, Information Security Officer, Aegean Baltic Bank.

Check Point Quantum Security Gateways are designed to secure encrypted traffic “HTTPS inspection is a requirement nowadays because 80 percent of the traffic on the internet is encrypted,” said Antonis Hassiotis. “It’s paramount to be able to check the content the Bank’s users have access to and all internal and external environments they are communicating with. We chose Check Point because it’s very good at that.”

Unlocking More Efficient Administration

Simple, unified management is essential. “Check Point offers centralized management to the administrators, giving them the ability to identify blocked traffic and investigate suspicious events,” said Yiannis Kanonis. “Its support for concurrent administration helps make our day-to-day work more efficient.”

Benefits

Security That Can Evolve at the Speed of Business

The Check Point Architecture was designed to be inherently flexible, enabling AB Bank to build out a security solution specifically for financial services—and move fast when conditions change.

“Check Point’s strong point is the fact that there are so many different security options” said Antonis Hassiotis.

“The Bank constantly invests on new platforms and focuses on keeping its security infrastructure up to date. Therefore, it is strongly committed in selecting the most valuable security solutions from its vendors” added Yiannis Kanonis.

Extending Endpoint Security

AB Bank is constantly evaluating its security posture to stay abreast of new threats throughout its infrastructure, from the data center to endpoints and we are investing in advanced and fresh solutions, taking advantage of the advanced functionalities which enhance and secure the Bank and the end user experience.”