A national clothing retailer needed to ensure its compliance with standards set by the Payment Card Industry (PCI). After carefully considering the customer’s network and business needs, CDW proposed an intrusion prevention system (IPS) that would cover all of the retailer’s approximately 340 retail locations, three distribution warehouses, and two data centers. Moreover, the solution could be configured and deployed remotely from the retailer’s New York headquarters.

The Architecture and Delivery team designed and presented several solutions to give the customer different options to meet their specific needs. During a careful process of planning and strategizing, CDW worked closely with the customer to develop the best, most cost-effective and technically sound implementation approach. The CDW sales team was in constant contact with the customer’s IT management and staff to understand and adjust for shifting budgetary and technical requirements. The strong investment CDW made in planning and communication allowed CDW to earn the customer’s trust.

To be certain the solution would work, CDW divided the project into three phases. The first phase, focused on careful planning and design. CDW engineers worked closely with the customer’s senior IT engineer and team leads, as well as a PCI auditor, to develop a point-of-sale (POS) network for each of the retailer’s stores. These networks each had to be protected by an IPS and firewall. They likewise had to incorporate comprehensive event logging and new high-level encryption pin pads. In addition, each of the three warehouses required a protective firewall. CDW worked diligently to make sure the overall solution wouldn’t disrupt existing wireless service in the warehouses. They also built into the solution future readiness for a wireless POS network at each store in order to handle both voice and data.

Before entering the pilot phase of the project, one of CDW’s senior engineers spent time validating the solution to ensure that it would work exactly as planned. Then the solution was deployed to a small group of stores to add another level of verification of the solution’s viability. These measures helped the retailer to be absolutely certain they had rightly placed their trust in CDW’s expertise.

Thirty-five new Cisco 2811 routers with VSEC bundles were purchased and built out with IPS modules at the customer’s New York headquarters for the pilot phase of the project. CDW then developed an implementation schedule that would enable the customer to replace and deploy equipment in shifts, completing the project over approximately six months in order to avoid budget strain.

The customer is so pleased with the solution and the professional manner in which it was designed and deployed that they’re now considering contracting with CDW to remotely manage it for them, freeing up their own IT staff to work on more critical projects.