Case Study

Commerce State Bank protects growthwith advanced security
Wisconsin bank saves time on security administration, improves
patch compliance, and reduces endpoint licensing costs
Founded in 2005, CommerceState Bank provides awide range of banking
products and services toindividuals and businesses.
The company helps
businesses drive revenue
with commercial loans andindividuals realize their
dreams of home ownership,asset preservation, andwealth accumulation.

THE CHALLENGE
It was a close call. An employee at Commerce State Bank unknowingly clicked on a ransomwareinfected file. When the PC acted strangely, the employee wisely shut it down before theransomware spread. While there was relief that disaster had been averted, IT recognized theexisting Trend Micro security solution was no longer meeting the bank’s needs. Aside frommissing threats, Trend Micro proved difficult to manage and scale as the bank experienced
strong growth.
IT evaluated solutions from McAfee, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, and Bitdefender. Initially, the bankchose Bitdefender GravityZone Advanced Business Security and later upgraded to GravityZone
Elite Security and most recently to GravityZone Ultra Security.
Peter Garancis, Vice President, Information Technology, Commerce State Bank, says, “We
selected GravityZone because it was easy to manage and scale while offering advanced securityand intelligence. We also liked that there was a smooth pathway to other GravityZone productsthat would provide us with enhanced security and cloud-based management as our bank grew.”

THE SOLUTION
Today, Commerce State Bank protects Microsoft Windows workstations, Windows and Linuxservers, and VMware virtual machines with Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Security. GravityZone
Ultra Security includes Sandbox Analyzer, an endpoint-integrated sandbox to analyze suspicious
files, detonate payloads, and report malicious intent to administrators, and HyperDetect, a nextgeneration security layer that provides tunable machine learning with advanced heuristics andanti-exploit techniques.
The bank also uses GravityZone Full-Disk Encryption and Patch Management add-on modules.
Applications protected by GravityZone include Encompass360 mortgage management,
ComplianceOne loan origination, FIS core banking, and Microsoft Office solutions, among others.

IndustryBankingHeadquarters
West Bend, Wisconsin, USAEmployees
80 (IT staff, 22)
Results- Stopped entry ofsophisticated malware andspyware- Increased patch
compliance from 70 to 95
percent- Improved performance ofuser workstations- Decreased endpoint
licensing costs by 15-20
percent

Case Study“Deploying GravityZone was so simple that our college intern did most of the rollout with littleguidance,” reflects Garancis. “It gave me confidence that GravityZone was easy to manage
and wouldn’t require training.”

THE RESULTS
Since installing GravityZone, Commerce State Bank has avoided malware or spywareoutbreaks. Garancis says, “The layered security and incident response with GravityZone Ultra
Security is powerful. Bitdefender automatically grabs malware or spyware and removes it.
With Web filters and heuristics, GravityZone Hyper-Detect learns the behavior of malware on
the fly rather than creating a rule or signature after the fact.”
As a bank, compliance with state and federal regulations is a priority. Bitdefender easily
generates the reports necessary to prove compliance.
With the GravityZone Patch Management add-on module, IT has increased patch compliancefrom 70 to 95 percent, explains Garancis. “We are so much better off with GravityZone PatchManagement. Our success rate went way up, and we reduced time we spent on patch
management by 50 percent.”
Commerce State Bank expects that the GravityZone Full-Disk Encryption add-on module
will reduce time associated with manually managing workstation encryption keys. Equallyimportant is that Bitdefender storing the encryption keys will be more secure and provide
better recoverability.
Garancis credits the well-designed, easy-to-use GravityZone cloud console with decreasingtime spent on security administration. He says, “Because the GravityZone console is in
the cloud, Bitdefender takes care of updating it, so everything is secure. We can access itfrom our main and DR sites or a remote location. It’s one piece of the puzzle I don’t have toworry about.” Because GravityZone is centralized, Commerce State Bank reduced endpoint
licensing costs by 15-20 percent.

“With Web filters andheuristics, GravityZone
Hyper-Detect learns thebehavior of malware on
the fly rather than creatinga rule or signature
after the fact.”
Peter Garancis, Vice President,
Information Technology,
Commerce State Bank

Bitdefender Footprint- GravityZone Ultra
Security- Patch Management- Full-Disk Encryption
IT Environment- VMware ESXi
Operating Systems- Linux- Microsoft Windows

GravityZone’s lightweight footprint barely consumes infrastructure resources, unlike
competitor products, which slow down performance during scanning. “GravityZone’sperformance has been stellar,” remarks Garancis, “Even when we upgraded to enhanced
GravityZone products, there wasn’t any performance degradation. We heard from users thatthings ran much faster when we switched to GravityZone.”

Bitdefender is a global cybersecurity leader protecting over 500 million systems in more than 150 countries. Since 2001, Bitdefender innovation has consistently delivered award-winning security products and threat
intelligence for the smart connected home, mobile users, modern businesses and their networks, devices, data centers and Cloud infrastructure. Today, Bitdefender is also the provider of choice, embedded in over 38% of theworld’s security solutions. Recognized by industry, respected by vendors and evangelized by customers, Bitdefender is the cybersecurity company you can trust and rely on.
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In addition to appreciating GravityZone’s advanced endpoint security, the bank values theclose partnership with Bitdefender. “Bitdefender is always willing to go the extra mile for us,”
Garancis reflects. “The customer support has been outstanding. The people at Bitdefender
keep us informed of their roadmap and are fully invested in our success. Their commitment
to us as a customer is another factor in keeping our bank secure and protected.”