Alex Smith |
The Bank of Boteourt, a regional community bank based in Virginia, USA, decided to adopt the cloud-hosted Microsoft 365 suite to take advantage of its productivity tools, improve operations across its 13 branches, and deliver better customer experiences.
However, the bank also understood that it would be essential to find new solutions for email security and data protection to keep it safe from virtual threats.
"At the time, the number of phishing attacks was getting to be a real problem, so we wanted email security that could address the issue,” says Andy Shotwell, senior vice president of the Bank of Botetourt. “We knew we’d also need a cloud backup solution and, since we’re in such a heavily regulated industry, we wanted a powerful, easy-to-use archiving solution to support our compliance strategy.”
The bank was drawn to security provider Barracuda’s cloud-first solutions, having worked with the firm on previous security projects.
“We trust Barracuda, so that’s where we turned,” says Shotwell. “And we found a lot to like. The bundled capabilities in Barracuda Email Protection were just right for our needs. It’s the comprehensive, integrated security solution we needed for our Microsoft 365 deployment.”
The implementation of the solution has been smooth, with the Barracuda team supporting the roll-out and addressing any issues as they came up.
“Getting started with Barracuda Email Protection was very simple and quick,” says Shotwell. “And whenever we run into any issues, we just open an online ticket and it gets resolved very quickly. Barracuda’s support team has always been extremely responsive and helpful for us.”
The bank has since seen significant benefits as a result of the new solution.
“We’re definitely catching a lot of phishing attempts with the artificial intelligence-based inbox protection,” says Shotwell. “And the cloud backup service that’s included is a huge benefit. All our data in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Outlook is fully protected – and it’s completely effortless. Just as we expect from Barracuda.”
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2022 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.