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Cohen & Company
Auto VPN enables quick, secure connectivity between branches for accounting firm
MX - Security & SD-WANHighlights
- Cohen & Company accounting firm uses Cisco Meraki APs, security appliances, MDM
- Site-to-site auto VPN enables secure connectivity between branches in two clicks
- Traffic shaping prioritizes mission critical web applications
Overview
Cohen & Company, a regional accounting firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, uses Cisco Meraki cloud-managed access points, security appliances, and MDM to support their everyday business operations across six distributed sites during mission critical times such as tax season.
Original Networking Challenges
- Controller-based wireless environment was end-of-life; wanted to upgrade to a new solution
- Intermittent instability on the wireless side made for an unreliable corporate network
- Previous system lacked intrusion detection and prevention capabilities
Why Cisco Meraki
- Rock-solid intrusion detection and prevention at the firewall level via integrated Sourcefire
- Content management solution with filtering capabilities and traffic management
- Ease of management across multiple sites through the cloud-based dashboard
The Deployment
- Meraki MX Security Appliances at each location, with an MX400 in the data center and a mix of MX60s, MX80s, and MX100s depending on office size
- Initial trial at a few sites; early success enabled multi-office rollout
- True plug-and-play solution – workers with no technical knowledge were able to install
- Hardware automatically downloaded preconfigured settings from the cloud
- MR access points distributed throughout sites for secure, reliable wireless coverage
Meraki has been very reliable. We have not had any issues with any equipment being down, nor any issues with the dashboard not being available to us when we need it to be. We made it through our highest traffic period without a hiccup – so that was very good.
Michael Tylicki
Informational Technology Infrastructure Manager
Results
- Rock solid reliability during mission critical times like tax season when employees are using multiple applications at once
- Content filtering of traffic that is not work appropriate; traffic shaping non-mission-critical web applications
- Auto VPN enables secure site-to-site connectivity in just a few clicks
- Automatic failover from primary MPLS connection to VPN on every MX– so fast and seamless, even voice calls don’t drop
- Secure wireless access for employees & guests on separate SSIDs with custom settings