Hertz operates more than 1,600 “off-airport” locations in urban centers and neighborhoods. These “Local Edition” sites lease cars, trucks, and vans, often to nearby residents who are having their vehicles serviced or repaired.
The Story
Lost Connectivity Frustrates Customers
Customer service is critical for Hertz. To supplement fixed terminals at Local Edition counters, Hertz provides Panasonic Toughbook Tablets fitted with magnetic readers for processing credit cards. Staff members can grab a tablet from a docking station to provide service to waiting customers anywhere on the rental lot. The devices also allow staff to provide customers who are returning vehicles with curbside service, so customers can get on their way more quickly without needing to enter the office. The tablets run Windows XP and use a variety of network connections: wired connections through the dock, Wi-Fi, and AT&T cellular data service. When switching between networks, devices would often lose connectivity, requiring agents to restart applications and the devices to attempt to get online again. These extra steps frustrated staff and customers alike.
Security Challenges
Improved
Customer Service
Flexible
Provisioning
Lower
Operating Costs
"Absolute Secure Access allows the units to make the transition from wired to wireless connections seamlessly, without interrupting the data connections or active customer-service applications, and also encrypts card data so the transaction remains secure."
HERTZ SPOKESPERSON
The Solutions
How They Did It
Seamless Transition From Wired to Wireless Networks
Looking for answers, Hertz deployed Absolute Secure Access to ensure its staff had reliable connections to vital applications wherever they were assisting customers. The upgrade enabled Hertz to deliver on its commitment to customer service. It also enhanced security and reduced the time and resources needed to open new Local Edition sites. They hoped Absolute Secure Access would help prevent the broken connections that were threatening Hertz’s reputation for prompt, friendly service. Absolute proved the solution could enable devices to make the transition from wired to wireless networks seamlessly without interrupting data connections or any Hertz customer service applications.
Flexible Policies Ensures the Security of Customer Data
However, resilient connections were not the only advantage of deploying Absolute Secure Access. The solution’s encryption ensured the security of customer credit card data while in transit across the network. The Hertz team began using the solution’s flexible security policies to help detect and block prohibited traffic within the device before it can traverse any external networks. They also found that they can set up various access policies based on the type of connection. For example, Hertz allows more permissive policies while the device is in the dock and wired to the Hertz internal network but enforces more restrictive policies for internal Wi-Fi and cellular network connections.
Simplify the Management of Devices in Distributed Locations
With Absolute Secure Access, Hertz is now able to rely solely on cellular service for new locations rather than installing and maintaining local Wi-Fi access points just to handle a few devices. This also allows Hertz to consolidate and simplify the management of devices at all of its locations nationwide through a single data center.
The Results
Secure Connectivity Speeds Up Customer Service, Keeping Customers Coming Back
New small rental or return centers can be set up quickly without excessive start-up costs or installation cycles. Staff is also assured the data stream is encrypted with the highest level of security available, in keeping with PCI standards as well as Hertz’s obligation to protect its customers. But it’s the trademark connectivity of Absolute Secure Access that helps Hertz delight customers with convenient and responsive service. Fast curbside service keeps cars moving and customers coming back.
For Hertz, Absolute Secure Access:
- Improves customer service
- Provides flexible provisioning to quickly start up new locations
- Lowers operating costs
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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