Schneider Electric is a specialist in energy management and automation, with operations in 190 countries. The Swedish division employs 2,000 staff who work largely as energy consultants, working out of the office more than 30 hours a week.
Schneider Electric is a specialist in energy management and automation, with operations in 190 countries. The Swedish division employs 2,000 staff who work largely as energy consultants, working out of the office more than 30 hours a week.
Schneider Electric’s energy consultants, based in Sweden, meet with customers, many of whom have confidential information on their laptops. The data contained on just one of the laptops could be worth around 150,000 dollars. Schneider Electric used Symantec as its backup software and started looking for new solutions when the software reached the end of its useful life.
The branch needed the ability to quickly restore data when laptops were lost or stolen. After considering HP Connected and several other options, the branch chose MIMECAST BY CODE42 for its total control over encryption keys and its ability to collect data from the Cloud without relying on local servers. “We are sensitive to the possibility of governments extracting data from internet service providers, so we wanted the encryption keys to be in our possession,” said Christian Kallqvist, country IT manager at Schneider Electric Sweden. “The Cloud service was also very important, because without it it wouldn’t be easy to back up the work of our mobile consultants.”
As Kallqvist explored MIMECAST BY CODE42, he realized he had a great business case, making it one of the easiest sales he’s ever made. With an average of five energy consultants losing their laptops or suffering a major data loss incident each year, Kallqvist realized that MIMECAST BY CODE42 would prevent the loss of $500,000 in data at this agency alone. What’s more, all the data can be recovered in just three to four hours – compared to the 24 hours it previously took to complete a partial recovery – increasing billable hours by around 100 per year.
“There’s nothing like numbers when you’re trying to get purchase authorizations from your superiors, and with MIMECAST BY CODE42, the conversation was easy,” said Kallqvist. “It took me about two minutes. I showed them the slide and they said: ‘Okay, let’s move on’ “.
Whether it’s a lost or stolen device or ransomware, data loss is no longer a concern for Schneider Electric Sweden. Recently, for example, some of the subsidiary’s employees were hit by the WannaCry ransomware attack. With MIMECAST BY CODE42 installed, the IT administrators recovered all the data in just three hours. “In one case, a sales representative came close to the office because he didn’t realize we had MIMECAST BY CODE42,” said Kallqvist. ” We just picked up the laptop, did a bit of magic and, in three hours, restored his laptop. The smiles you get after that kind of interaction are really satisfying “.