NAFFCO FZCO leverages Arcserve 9000 Series Appliances

In the business of creating and selling safety products, secure IT solutions are a sacrosanct requirement. With more than 15,000 team members - including 2,000 engineers and over 6 million square feet of manufacturing facilities - the NAFFCO FZCO's IT department is crucial to handling critical business applications.

However, prior to installing the Arcserve Appliances in its main Dubai branch, the company was facing multiple issues, including slow backup performance and even incomplete or failed backups. As the company grew over the last two decades, the organisation needed IT solutions that were stable and reliable, had multi-site replication, as well as built-in data and system backups from ransomware attacks.

That's where Arcserve Appliances came in. Over the last six months, the company has reported an organisation-wide increase in productivity, as well as seamless application performance and a healthy return on investment.

About NAFFCO FZCO

At NAFFCO, ‘Passion to Protect' is more than just a slogan, it's a way of life. Established in 1991 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, NAFFCO is among the world's leading producers and suppliers of top-tier firefighting equipment, fire protection systems, fire alarms, security and safety engineering systems worldwide. Since its humble beginnings, NAFFCO has grown from its headquarters in the UAE to expand to a global network of over 100 countries around the world. In recognition of its growth and commitment to quality, the company has also been certified with ISO 9001, ISO 14001 & ISO 45001 and awarded the prestigious Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum business excellence award for four years in areas including manufacturing and exports.

The Challenge

In their vision to become the world's number one provider of innovative solutions in protecting life, environment and property, NAFFCO's IT infrastructure needed a massive upgrade. According to Mr. Mohannad Hennawi, the organisation's Group IT Manager, who manages a team of 20 IT staff team members, the company's previous systems were severely lacking when it comes to backup performance and data security.

After a complete IT infrastructure review, Mr Hennawi noticed that slowly and, many times, incomplete backup performance was hampering his team's and the larger organisation's overall performance. More specifically, unsuccessful backup on email exchanges, data protection and ransomware were proving to be troublesome for the company.

To modernise its operations and further strengthen its data resilience, NAFFCO needed a new data protection solution that was cost-effective, scalable and flexible with integrated cybersecurity features to secure its critical digital assets.

The Solution 

Working closely with Arcserve local partner Gerab, the Arcserve Appliances 9360DR and 9096DR were deployed in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to protect NAFFCO's 45 physical servers and 100 virtual machines and streamline the organisation's environment.

Arcserve Appliances provide a self-contained, "set and forget", secure DR and backup solution architected global source-based deduplication, multi-site replication, tape integration, automated data restore capabilities and assured recovery. "After considering and comparing against many vendors, we finally chose the Arcserve Appliances as they are easy to manage and whilst being feature-rich, with full cyber security protection against ransomware," said Mr Hennawi.

To protect data and system backups from ransomware and other types of malicious attacks, the Arcserve Appliances include the Sophos Intercept-X Advanced for Server advanced endpoint protection that combines a signature-based and signatureless malware detection, a deep learning neural network, anti-exploit technology, CryptoGuard anti-ransomware and WipeGuard technologies to stop the widest range of endpoint threats.

"After considering and comparing against many vendors, we finally chose the Arcserve Appliances as they are easy to manage and whilst being feature rich, with full cyber security protection against ransomware," said Mr Hennawi.

While the implementation took three days to execute and a week to go online, Mr Hennawi says the process was seamless and ‘smoothly done.' "The management interface is quite simple to understand and use," he said. "We would recommend providing deep technical training for the team in the future."

The Result

With the assistance of Gerab, NAFFCO first deployed the 9360DR in Dubai's data centre in February 2022. It has more than met the company's needs and expectations, so much so that it led NAFFCO to also purchase the 9096DR for its Abu Dhabi branch.

Having seen results within the first week of deployment, the company's Group IT manager is satisfied with how the solutions have helped in increasing productivity by 100 per cent, as well as how it has led to 50 per cent more seamless application performance and 50 per cent savings in the cost of operations.

In the future, the company also aims to install Arcserve Appliances at its Qatar and Saudi Arabia branches. "We need to plan for a backup solution which will be compatible with cloud solutions," said Mr Hennawi of future needs for the company's IT.