Security never sleeps at Thorntons

Gasoline/convenience retailer Thorntons Inc. maximizes its customer “convenience” with 24-hour service at many locations. This requires the Louisville, Kentucky-based, 175-store chain to operate robust network security that can handle heavy transaction volume at all times.



“We needed a simple and effective whitelisting (file and application approval) product to prevent outbound Internet access except to desired places,” said David Caudill, VP of IT for Thorntons.



Thorntons selected San Francisco-based security platform provider NetFortris to implement a centralized, PCI-compliant firewall solution. Using the NetFortris cloud-based managed security and Total Control Firewall solutions, Thorntons was able to meet its high network uptime requirements while ensuring privacy and security of all data on its network.



In addition, Thorntons upgraded its backup capabilities by replacing outdated dial-up based network backup with mobile 3G/4G broadband backup. This provided greater contingency and disaster recovery capabilities in a cost-efficient manner.



“When a circuit went down, we were able to utilize the 3G/4G connection in conjunction with border gateway protocol (exterior gateway protocol used to route Web traffic) to create a quick failover to the 3G/4G connection, with no human intervention and a minimal amount of downtime,” stated Caudill.



Looking ahead, Thorntons plans to roll out a second wired circuit at each store to replace the 3G/4G wireless backups, as well a dual router setup for additional redundancy.



“The next project will enable a further level of redundancy by adding an additional router to each store to eliminate the one single point of failure,” concluded Caudill.