Great Eastern Life, Symantec in security suite deal

• Insurer adopts Symantec security software to enhance customer data protection
• Sees potential in cloud computing, SaaS subject to compliance with regulatory guidelines

ONE of the region’s oldest financial institutions has turned to Symantec Corp in a bid to streamline its operations, improve its IT systems and ensure that it has the technology capabilities to serve its customers in a more holistic manner.
 
Great Eastern Life Assurance (Malaysia) Bhd announced that it has chosen a suite of software from the Mountain View, California-based information security specialist to help manage the insurance firm’s data and to ensure that the Singapore-based company is compliant with the ever-changing standards regulating the industry.
 
Incorporated in Singapore in 1908 and claiming to be the largest life insurance company in Singapore and Malaysia, Great Eastern Life (GEL) is a subsidiary of OCBC Bank and boasts 2.9 million policyholders and 17,000 insurance agents in Malaysia.
 
Alex Ong (pic), Symantec Malaysia country director noted that as the IT security landscape continues to evolve, companies need to be better prepared to protect their most critical business data with advanced technology.
 
“GEL’s move to place information protection as one of their top priorities is commendable,” he added.

According to Vincent Chin, GEL’s senior vice president and head of information technology, the company which rebranded itself as a 'Life' company, went through major repositioning last year in a bid to put customers at the centre of the organisation's heart.
 
From a technology standpoint, one of GEL’s goals was to ensure that it operates in an environment that is as secure as possible and that all its data assets are secured and protected, he added.
 
“One of our top priorities is to protect our customers' information and this means strengthening our entire data protection capabilities,” he said in his keynote address at a media briefing on July 22. “We are not doing this just for the sake of compliance but because we want to protect all our digital assets.”
 
Asked what kind of cost savings GEL has managed to save by adopting solutions from Symantec, Chin declined to be specific, stating that the company chose the Symantec's product suite “not so much for cost saving purposes but to enhance its system availability.”
 
“It’s about bringing our capabilities to the next level,” he clarified. “These include customer information protection, how to secure our digital assets, and to assure our various stakeholders that their information stored with us is in good hands.”
 
Some of the Symantec products deployed by GEL include: Norton Internet Security to help its agency force enhanced security on their endpoint devices; Symantec Protection Suite and Symantec Mail Security to protect its desktops, laptops, and email infrastructure; and Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) which brings disk encryption for its PCs and Notebooks to its users.
 
Also in the mix were Symantec Control Compliance Suite (CCS), to automate compliance checks for servers and databases and Symantec NetBackup to automate daily backup of databases.

Next page: Benefits and future plans for GEL