OVERVIEW

As one of the nation’s most respected independent staffing firms, California-based Kimco is dedicated to providing the best staffing service possible—and having a proven, well-known partner to protect their data is a core part of that. Kimco Staffing Services assists job candidates and companies, and since 1986 has found employment for more than 255,000 people. This means protecting personally identifiable information (PII) is crucial. To safeguard the PII for both Kimco employees and job candidates, the company chose Trend Micro Deep Security to keep their environment secure.

CHALLENGES

A primary goal for Kimco is to ensure strong data protection for the PII of its customer base. The company also handles payroll for approximately 3,500 people each week. All of this data is subject to regulations by state and federal law, and Kimco must ensure that they meet or exceed all regulatory requirements.

With offices in California, Nevada, and Arizona, approximately 500 endpoints and 200 servers, as well as employees and recruiters who work remotely, keeping their distributed environment secure is a challenge.

“We are in the business of creating livelihoods for people. We don’t make widgets—our business is people, and protecting their data is paramount. We are proud of how we support our clients through innovation and the technology we use,” says Azeddine Ouhida, Vice President of Information Technology and Operations at Kimco Staffing Services.

WHY TREND

During an overall corporate restructuring in 2012, Kimco evaluated several security solutions before selecting Trend Micro. “From an administration and management perspective, Trend Micro was easiest to use. The dashboard and the visibility it provides won the team over. Those things make a big difference because you have to use these tools daily,” says Ouhida.

Trend Micro’s ability to manage Kimco’s virtualized environment was also important. Kimco was an early adopter of VMware and the company found that other security providers weren’t yet prepared to handle a virtualized environment. “Trend Micro was ahead of the game in working and servicing virtual environments. Other providers do that now, but Trend Micro was first. Virtualization gives us a lot of room to scale quickly. Having Trend Micro on top of all that is really important,” says Ouhida.

Trend Micro support was another selling point. “When you adopt a solution, relationships come into play. We’ve always had a good relationship with Trend Micro. Whenever we have an issue, support has always been there. I can go buy a product tomorrow that will probably do a good job, but having the support and the people behind the product makes a big difference,” says Ouhida.

SOLUTION

Kimco Staffing Services selected Trend Micro Deep Security to automate protection for new and existing workloads against threats, as the solution brings advanced protection to physical and virtual servers. Through automatic policy management, Deep Security enables easy deployment and management of security, and with Deep Security on servers in their data center, Kimco is leveraging Trend Micro’s anti-malware, intrusion prevention, and web reputation services.

Ouhida says that Deep Security’s ability to provide his team with an overall view of their security status at a glance and to enforce policies quickly across locations or machine types are the biggest benefits. “Knowing you have a real-time, on-demand visibility of what’s protected makes a difference. We get accelerated incident response through an easy-to-read and quick-to-action dashboard. Trend Micro Deep Security gives us great visibility into the entire infrastructure,” says Ouhida.

More recently, Trend Micro helped Kimco optimize Deep Security and roll out additional features, providing the company with the full benefits of the comprehensive solution. “Trend Micro gives us peace of mind. They are an established security leader who always work to stay ahead of new threats,” says Ouhida.

RESULTS

Ouhida says Deep Security has added business value by making the company more resilient and saving him time he’d normally dedicate to handling security issues.  “We have all had close calls. Anytime you can minimize disruption by quickly isolating incidents has direct value. When you put it in terms of what an hour means to you as a business, it’s huge,” says Ouhida.

It all goes back to the strength of the partnership between Kimco Staffing Services and Trend Micro. “Just having access to resources to help evaluate our installation and configuration, whether we need to upgrade or adjust, has been great. It’s always appreciated and helpful, and it makes us more secure. Having a partner you can rely on is really important,” says Ouhida.