Dick Hannah Dealerships
Mimecast Helps Auto Dealer Eliminate Phishing and Ransomware Attacks and Reduce Archiving Costs by $50,000 Annually
Benefit
- With Mimecast in place, Dick Hannah Dealerships can focus less on firefighting and more on innovation for its users
Challenge
In late 2016, the IT staff at Dick Hannah Dealerships observed a noticeable uptick in email-borne phishing and ransomware attempts. Occasionally, Dick Hannah employees clicked on malicious links or attachments in those emails, leading to considerable email downtime for users and huge headaches for the IT team. The company’s legacy email security vendor was not able to prevent these more advanced attacks. The IT team was spending an average of two hours a day on manual fixes related to spam, phishing attacks and other email management tasks. CIO Sean McKannay knew it was time to make a change to protect the company’s network and his 1,000 email users.
Solution
McKannay and team reached out to their local VAR, seeking a new solution that would stave off these phishing attacks. Their long-list of must-haves also included: sandboxing for zero-day exploits, secure messaging, an Outlook plugin for end-user self-service, better user and administrator quarantine management, archiving, continuity/disaster recovery and improved security policy control.
The team evaluated several options, ultimately selecting Mimecast. “Mimecast was the only vendor we found that offered everything on our wish list, and at a significant cost advantage relative to the others,” says McKannay.
Mimecast replaced two on-premises solutions at Dick Hannah – one for security and one for archiving - and has provided peace of mind for the IT team. “Every time we had an attack, we’d have two IT staff working on it full-time for at least a day,” recalls McKannay. “Meantime, a group of users had no access to email, and all other IT work came to a halt. It was really crippling.”
Summary
Since implementing Mimecast, no zero-day exploits have hit Dick Hannah’s users and calls to the helpdesk for email support have been significantly reduced. The two hours a day the IT team used to spend on email management can now be dedicated to other work. “The Mimecast Outlook plug-in lets our users securely manage their own email, including archiving, very easily, so IT rarely needs to get involved,” says McKannay. The company was also able to significantly reduce its email storage needs, leading to cost savings of nearly $50,000 a year.
“With Mimecast in place, my IT department hasat least 20-30 additional hours a month to work on more strategic business initiatives. Mimecast is one of those rare products that is very clearly paying for itself over time.”
Sean McKannay, CIO and Digital Marketing Director, Dick Hannah Dealership