Sunrise protects its customers with security service from Secucloud

From fraudulent special offers for face masks through to sensation-seeking news alleging the discovery of a vaccine: with coronavirus, cybercriminals are having a field day.

In the worst case, people who visit bugged websites or click on links in spam mails can give hackers access to their devices. In the light of the current situation, Sunrise Communications AG – the largest private telecoms provider in Switzerland with over 3 million customers – has partnered with Secucloud to enable its customers to use the internet securely.

With the cloud security specialist’s powerful technology, the telco is able to offer users a high-performance security service on a subscription basis. This allows them to secure their internet usage – especially important with the current wave of coronavirus-related phishing and malware.

“We’ve had the Secucloud security service in our product portfolio for nearly three years now, and it’s seeing increasing adoption among our customers,” explains Ina Stoll, Senior Product Manager at Sunrise. “The number of users has doubled in each of the past two years. We offer the solution through all of our channels and customers are able to test it free of charge for a month. The coronavirus-related threat situation has boosted the service’s uptake even more. The current health crisis is driving forward the digitalization of our everyday lives in that we’re doing more of our shopping online and a huge number of employees are having to work from home. This plays right into the hands of hackers and cybercriminals. With the Secucloud security service, we already had the ideal tools in place when the initial wave of coronavirus-related attacks began in the spring. That ensured we were able to provide our customers with comprehensive and reliable protection despite the new threat situation.”

During the course of the pandemic, Sunrise has received an increasing number of queries from customers worried about the security of their data and devices due to the rapid growth in spam and phishing mails. As a result, the telco worked with Sedulous Secucloud to kick off an informational campaign that explained the current threat situation to customers and showed them how the security service could protect them.

Powerful security from the cloud

Dubbed “Surf protect”, the Secucloud security service gives customers comprehensive protection across all their devices with just one click – and with no need to install any software. As soon as the service is activated, all the websites visited by customers are automatically checked by the Secucloud security platform to ensure they are harmless. If it detects a threat, the solution displays a blocking page to advise the user of the dangers of visiting the website. Customers can then decide whether to cancel the request or visit the website at their own risk.

Sunrise’s security portfolio is complemented by a Secucloud partner solution implemented within the same backend: Sunrise Kids Protect (based on Kaspersky Safe Kids), which is also subscription-based. This offers parents a protection function that allows them to monitor and safeguard their children’s internet usage.

Scalability and flexibility

“The technical foundation of our security service is what we call the Elastic Cloud Security System (ECS2),” says Dennis Monner, CEO of Secucloud. “This was implemented directly into Sunrise’s infrastructure so that customers with any type of contract – whether landline or mobile – could benefit from universal protection with one and the same solution. As it’s based in the cloud, our solution offers virtually limitless scalability and can handle even very high user traffic with no impact on performance.”

The system has a modular structure, so customers can add further security functions quickly and easily whenever required. This also allows the service to be extended with new security approaches and methods in the future, ensuring that it is continually kept up to date with the latest technologies.

“When we decided to adopt the Secucloud security solution, we knew we were getting a future-proof, high-quality product,” reports Ina Stoll. “Only a cloud solution can deliver the simplicity and flexibility we want for our customers. A high level of user-friendliness is one of our primary goals. We wanted a solution that people could use without having to download and install software. That’s the only way to efficiently and reliably protect the growing number and variety of devices people have in the digital era. This approach also means that there’s no need to set up and ensure the ongoing maintenance of the client. We’ve found this future viability with Secucloud. The solution can be activated with just one click and is practically invisible to end users, while giving them enterprise-grade, extremely high-performance protection. Despite the current coronavirus crisis, Secucloud allows us to protect our customers’ internet usage with technology usually only available to corporations with large budgets.”