Archdiocese of New Orleans Improves Network Security at Over 150 Locations with The Astaro Security Gateway

May 11, 2009 (Wilmington, MA) � Astaro Corporation, a leading network security vendor, today announced that the Archdiocese of New Orleans doubled their bandwidth, increased productivity, reduced administrative costs and successfully secured their network using the Astaro Security Gateway.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans is the oldest diocese in the United States. They manage networks at schools and Catholic charities as well as elderly assisted living facilities and selected Astaro�s Unified Threat Management platform to improve their network security at over 150 locations.

"Since implementing The Astaro Security Gateway we've been able to keep 30,000 people, including students, safe from the dangers of the Internet while increasing productivity in our IT department," said Robert Cochran, Network Administrator, Archdiocese of New Orleans.

With schools and businesses all on the same network, the Archdiocese was especially concerned about strong content filtering capabilities and the capacity to customize security at each location. The built-in and customizable filtering profiles feature in the Astaro Security Gateway took the burden of creating filtering rules off of the organization�s IT department and allowed the Archdiocese to create flexible content filtering based on location groups - providing the required increased filtering at schools. Additionally, blocking unproductive and undesired websites at business locations helped double the organization's available bandwidth.

Using the Astaro Security Gateway, the Archdiocese of New Orleans manages the security for all 151 locations through a single office, reducing network administration and energy costs. Astaro's graphical user interface also saves the organization time and increased productivity as the IT department spends less time managing the security system.

After reviewing several security solutions, The Archdiocese of New Orleans chose to implement The Astaro Security Gateway because of its strong content filtering and firewall capabilities.

Cochran continued: "The key feature that attracted us to the Astaro product was the firewall. It was far superior to the SGS 5400 we tested. We also liked Astaro for its ease of use, affordability and our initial comfort with the solution right out of the box."

"Organizations are realizing that network security is more than protecting networks from becoming exploited by the latest security threat. Security solutions can also increase productivity and reduce administrative costs if deployed properly," said David Rogers, Vice President, Astaro Corporation. "The Archdiocese of New Orleans's success using The Astaro Security Gateway is an excellent example of how organizations can deploy network security and increase their productivity in addition to protecting their network from malicious content and materials."