A maritime-industry specialist, Heinen & Hopman designs, engineers, and installs air conditioning, ventilation, central heating, and refrigeration systems. The company has supplied more than 10,000 vessels worldwide—not only commercial vessels but also state-of-the-art navy ships, superyachts, and offshore platforms.
The Story
Secure and Reliable Connections in Shipyards and Remote Sites
Technology can transform essential business operations in significant ways, but connectivity is a critical component of doing so. At Heinen & Hopman, their army of fitters relies heavily on mobile devices and connections for vital technical information to complete their jobs. They need a stable, reliable, and secure Internet connection to be able to use applications, such as 3D visualizations of the ships that they are working on. Since the fitters mainly do their work in shipyards and other remote sites, they often had to deal with poor Internet connections and regularly experienced connection drops.
Security Challenges
Resolved
Connection Issues
Real-time Data
Synchronization
Secure
Remote Access
"The fitters are so enthusiastic that everyone is asking for the Absolute Secure Access solution. So, we are constantly extending its use to more devices, and our aim is to double the number of devices using it this year."
REINIER VAN SCHAIK
ICT MANAGER,
HEINEN & HOPMAN
The Solutions
How They Did It
Access Vital Data, Anytime and Anywhere
For a time, workers tried carrying static versions of the drawings on their laptops for use onsite, but without a reliable connection and synchronization, the drawings were obsolete. A search was initiated for other solutions. They turned to Absolute’s implementation partner NetBoss BV, who provided the Absolute Secure Access solution. After a successful proof of concept, the software was launched in production. The fitters were immediately able to access vital data all the time and from anywhere.
Less Time Wasted = Increased Productivity
Now, the workers can access vital data about the ship from anywhere without disruption. They can take their devices on board with them, which means that they don’t constantly need to go back to an office on the dock or on shore. The end result is less time wasted and an increase in productivity, not only for the fitters but also for the supervising fitter, who is able to spend more time onsite.
Enhanced Policies Lead to Continuous, Uninterrupted Performance
Setting up a software-based, mobile infrastructure allows policies to be created quickly. The policies automatically come into force subject to certain conditions. For example, when the connection is 3G or lower, only the primary applications are allowed. With only the crucial applications using the available bandwidth, the policies ensure that they continue to perform well. And when the connection changes, the session continues running in the background, which means that there is no longer need to log on again.
The Results
Keeping Maritime Workers Connected Without Compromising on Security
Since NetBoss became involved as the Absolute Secure Access implementation partner, a great deal has changed at Heinen & Hopman. Van Schaik compares using Absolute Secure Access with switching on a lamp: “instead of activating a switch manually, the ‘light’ comes on now as soon as you walk past.”
For Heinen & Hopman, Absolute Secure Access:
- Resolves all connection-related problems
- Provides access to accurate, updated job information Ƃ Allows real-time data synchronization
- Prioritizes access for crucial applications
- Improves productivity for fitters and supervisors
Absolute Platform FAQ
The Absolute® Platform leverages a cloud-based, highly-available and secure multi-tenant architecture that is available across different regions. It’s comprised of a variety of foundational components that power Absolute product features that are being leveraged by the company’s enterprise customers and ecosystems partners (e.g., independent software vendors, original equipment manufacturers, or managed service providers) alike.
The Absolute Platform consists of three core components:
- Absolute Persistence Technology
Absolute Persistence® technology, a unique, patented technology is already embedded in over 600 million devices as a result of Absolute’s partnership with nearly 30 system manufacturers from around the world. Once activated, this technology is fiercely resilient and is the only solution to survive attempts to disable it, even if the device is re-imaged, the hard drive is replaced, or the firmware is updated.
No other technology can do this. Ultimately, it provides a secure, unbreakable, and always-on connection between the Absolute Platform and the endpoint, allowing you to gain unprecedented real-time visibility, control, and remediation capabilities.
- Absolute Resilience Technology
The Absolute Platform utilizes two types of patented Absolute Resilience™ technology to ensure that mission-critical applications remain healthy and operational and to provide end users with the most productive, as well as optimized remote access experience possible:
- Application Resilience™: Monitors mission-critical applications’ health and behavior; detects if missing, corrupted, or not running; and automatically repairs or re-installs components when necessary – without requiring human intervention. Application Resilience ensures security controls are working as expected and provides optimal user experience by fixing unhealthy applications. Currently more than 60 mission-critical applications are enabled for Application Resilience and more are being added frequently.
- Network Resilience™: Monitors and automatically, as well as transparently restores and optimizes unhealthy network connections so networked applications continue to operate without end user-impacting interruptions that would otherwise require manual application restarts, network re-connects, and/or re-authentications. Network Resilience allows for superior connectivity and reliability, allowing end users to focus on their tasks and not network behavior.
- Absolute Intelligence
Absolute ensures a digital tether to each device remains intact, providing you with reliable insights and intelligence from all of your endpoints to the network edge — on or off your corporate network.
Hundreds of data points are gathered and served up as insights, providing guidance on utilization, health, security and compliance posture, as well as a unified view into the entire end user experience. Applying AI-based risk assessment and user entity behavior analytics lets you go beyond the monitoring of resources and applications, allowing for automated remediation and uncompromised user productivity.
Other foundational components of the Absolute Platform that enable the Absolute Secure Endpoint™ and Secure Access™ products are as follows:
- Web console
- Mobile app
- Rules and policy engine
- Alerts
- Dashboards
- APIs
- Application Persistence-as-a-Service SDK
- Third-party integrations (e.g., SIEM, ITSM)
Customers can leverage the Absolute Platform components through Absolute’s packaged products, APIs, and SDKs. The result will be rapid innovation. The Absolute Platform is always included in the product package of choice.
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Secure Endpoint
Mitigating Zero-Day Threats in a Complex Cybersecurity LandscapeLive Webinar - Sept 17, 2024 | 9AM PT
Secure Access
Leveraging AI to Protect Against Modern Cybersecurity ThreatsLive Webinar - Oct 1, 2024 | 9AM PT
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