ICB Bank Seeks to Improve Operations With Cisco's Service-Oriented Network Architecture

HANOI, VIETNAM--(Marketwire - October 23, 2007) - ICB Bank, one of the leading commercial banks in Vietnam, is establishing another milestone as an early adopter of information and communications technology (ICT) in the country. With the implementation managed by HPT Technology, a Cisco-certified premier reseller, the bank is deploying the Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) to help it unify network-based services such as security, mobility and location with the virtualization of ICT resources. ICB Bank has also implemented the Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC) solution, which enables the bank to enforce security policies on all endpoint devices, whether managed or unmanaged, as they enter the network.

The bank sees ICT as a necessary element of modern business and is committed to taking advantage of the latest technologies to differentiate itself not just in Vietnam but, in the future, in the regional and international markets.

"As a leading bank in Vietnam, ICB must conduct highly reliable and highly secure financial transactions. The deployment of advanced technologies such as Cisco SONA and NAC will help to improve the efficiency and security of our systems and provide a platform for the future expansion of our operations outside of Vietnam," said Pham Tuan Anh, vice general director of ICB.

HPT Technology has been working with ICB Bank since 2003 when they were awarded the contract for a pilot IT security project. HPT has since committed considerable resources toward better understanding ICB's current and future requirements. "Through many man hours of planning and deployment and in close co-operation with Cisco and ICB, we were able to ensure that the solutions from Cisco were implemented smoothly, especially the Cisco NAC solution," said Dinh Ha Duy Linh, managing director of HPT Technology.

"Cisco's highly secure networking solutions have been deployed by leading financial institutions around the world. We are glad to be able to bring the benefits of these solutions to the banks in Vietnam, providing them with a networking and communications infrastructure that is on par with those of the leading companies in the global financial system," said James Chia, general director of Cisco Vietnam.

With Cisco SONA, ICB Bank is able to use the network as an integrated environment over which distributed applications and services can be centrally managed. This creates efficiency in the use of network assets and provides a feature-rich foundation. By integrating devices, applications and services that have been designed to work together, SONA brings greater intelligence to the network. The resulting infrastructure is dynamic, application- and service-aware, and capable of taking a more active role in optimizing communications.

This greater intelligence in the network is backed up by Cisco's NAC solution, which fundamentally changes how security is implemented because it allows comprehensive security policies to be translated into rules that are reliably enforced, resulting in proactive and pervasive security for an organization. Cisco NAC accomplishes this by adopting a scalable architecture with a central policy decision component, a distributed security enforcement component at the network level, and extensive integration with additional security products and technologies.

"Cisco NAC can be compared to the scanners at an airport that scan for objects that present a security risk. This list of objects, like security policies, can be revised and updated as needed. This will help limit the impact of threats to the network and hence the entire ICT infrastructure," said Cisco's Chia.

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