Port of san Diego

Port of San Diego Relies on Messaging Architects' Product Portfolio to Meet the Security & Compliance Requirements of its Collaborati System

Messaging Architects' M+Guardian ensures the protection of the organization from spam and viruses, while M+Archive gurantees that the Port of San Diego remains fully compliant with regulations.

Executive Summary
For several years, the Port of San Diego has been using Messaging Architects’ software in order to maximize its investment in the Novell GroupWise collaboration system. The self-contained M+Guardian email firewall ensures that the organization is protected from spam and viruses while supporting the Port of San Diego’s commitment to a green policy by efficient use of processor power. M+Archive has automated the email retention process making open records requests fast and easy to produce and guaranteeing that the local government agency remains fully compliant with the current state regulations.

Background
The Port of San Diego was created by the state Legislature in 1962 to manage San Diego Bay and surrounding waterfront land. With more than 600 employees and 2007 revenues of $133.7 million, the agency oversees the protection and development of the Bay. The San Diego Harbor Police Department is the premier police presence in San Diego Bay, the San Diego International Airport (also known as Lindbergh Field), and on all Tidelands around the bay. The Port is made up of Imperial Beach, National City, Chula Vista, San Diego and Coronado waterfront properties. A report released in June 2007 studying how the Port operations benefit the region shows that business operations on Port leaseholds generated $10.7 billion in revenue and more than 77,000 jobs for the San Diego area. The Port of San Diego leverages Novell GroupWise to meet its collaboration needs and to ensure uninterrupted communication with the public.

Protecting the Integrity of the Email System with M+Guardian
Like any other public organization, the Port of San Diego relies on its email system for quick and efficient communication with the public. That’s why it was important for the IT Department to find and deploy that a highly efficient anti-spam and anti-virus solution was deployed so that employee productivity wasn’t affected. They selected the Guardian technology from Messaging Architects because it offered robust functionality, ease of use and manageability, and great end-user flexibility.

"We turned to Gartner Research for advice and they recommended Messaging Architects,” explains Jasmin Mededovic, System Support Analyst at the Port of San Diego in charge of the collaboration system. “The product has worked very well for us in terms of spam catch rate and flexible policy configuration. The web-based administration of the M+Guardian interface makes it easier to manage the appliance from any location. The policy engine allows us to do many things depending on the group of end users we’re dealing with. I also like the fact that M+Guardian comes as a self-contained appliance and conforms to our commitment to be green and use as little processing power as possible without letting our operations be affected.”

Ensuring Quick and Easy Access to Information with M+Archive
As a public agency the Port of San Diego is bound by the requirements for the long-term retention of public records and the ability to provide access to them in cases of open records requests. Having an on-going relationship with Messaging Architects for the perimeter security of their email system, the IT Department decided to deploy M+Archive to automate the lifecycle management of those legitimate email records that do enter the organization’s email system. The Port’s retention policy mandates that all email is kept in the agency’s archiving system for a period of two years. Once the maximum retention period is reached, they are automatically removed from the archive repository.

"We are a public agency and need to be prepared for open records requests and legal discovery. The decision to roll out M+Archive was policy-driven: we needed to have a system in place that enabled us to produce electronic records on demand quickly. At the same time, the choice to enhance GroupWise with M+Archive has proven to be a cost-effective decision, too. It saves the IT Department considerable time and effort every time we need to search for electronic data. Given the importance of email for public agencies today, investing in an email archiving solution is no longer a nice-to-have option, but a business-critical application - as a government organization we need to be compliant with respect to retention periods and to have the ability to search and retrieve email based on a variety of criteria without incurring extreme cost in the process.” concludes Mededovic.