VirusScan deployment and management
The Client
A government agency that handles family and social services, attempting to get a handle on the virus threat in its network
The Challenge
The previous McAfee products were very difficult to deploy and control domain-wide. With viruses sometimes appearing daily, it became increasingly important to be able to get clients to update frequently to keep up with the current threats. In addition, there was no way to know how many clients and servers were really up to date and what products were installed.
Day- to- day challenges included:
- Poor visibility into the state of virus scan protection on all the clients and servers created problems when a virus outbreak happened
- Inability to force an “immediate” update domain-wide in the event of a virus outbreak
- Lack of control in changing update locations of clients once the initial product was deployed
- After scheduled updates would occur, no ability to report on the status of the current update
- Inability to easily deploy service packs or hot fixes for the virus scan product as needed
- Silent deployment of products was very hard to achieve through previous scripting techniques
In order to combat the current and future virus threats, as well as be able to report and control the virus scan products, a solution was needed that would give complete control of deployment through management; to the virus scan products.
The Haverstick Approach
Haverstick Consulting’s strategy for solving our client’s integration challenges was to engage the services of our integration practice. Following our proven integration methodology and leveraging our in-depth experience with integrating systems, Haverstick Consulting delivered a fully functional virus defense system in six months’ time.
In working with the client, Haverstick Consulting took a two-pronged approach. The first stage involved analyzing the current virus scan defense to find its weaknesses. This was then followed by a controlled release of new products across all servers and workstations in the network.
All critical systems and network holes were defined and documented before any deployment began. Once defined, the critical systems were identified in the change management process and updated. This allowed all tiers of the support infrastructure to be aware and ready for any problems that might arise.
This methodology allowed for a controlled deployment that would not overwhelm the client but provide the most proactive, controlled, and expedited approach possible.
Haverstick Consulting set up and installed McAfee VirusScan on all servers and desktops with the E-Policy Orchestrator agent to ensure management from a centralized location.
The Result
The agency is enjoying the following benefits as a result of its integration implementation:
- The agency has the ability to schedule an “immediate” update on all servers and clients in the domain whenever needed.
- Reports can be run at any time to see the status of product installation, product updates, and virus activity over various time periods.
- Updating of 8000 clients over 150 WAN sites does not impact the WAN because all of the clients use their local site servers to update without impacting the WAN.
- The agency has the ability to roll back patches, hot fixes, or DAT updates as needed.
- New updates to products can be sent to each WAN site in a controlled manner with a completely silent install.
- The entire McAfee suite of virus defense products can be deployed and managed using E-Policy Orchestrator.
As a result of its partnership with Haverstick Consulting, our client now has complete visibility and control over the entire virus scan defense suite from a central console. | 
