CASE STUDY
Established in Tasmania in 1874 by Benjamin Dunkerly , Akubra has been designing , manufacturing and distributing iconic Australian hats to customers for more than 100 years .
In the First World War , the company established a working relationship with the Australian military and was responsible for designing and producing hats for soldiers . In 1956 , the company produced Panama straw hats that were worn by the Australian Olympic team , followed by the iconic Spirit of Australia hats worn by athletes in the 2000 Sydney Olympics .
Today , Akubra hats are manufactured in a factory in Kempsey , New South Wales , and the company has built a distribution network and loyal customer base that spans the globe .
“ The situation had been exacerbated by the fact that some staff had signed up with third-party organizations ,” said Akubra General Manager of Operations , Ron Palin . “ In some cases , those organizations had been compromised and email addresses had been stolen . This , in turn , led to our staff becoming targets for cybercriminals .”
Palin says protective measures put in place within the company had essentially been limited to basic antivirus packages on some rack-mounted servers . These servers supported an ERP system and officebased applications .
“ We realized we had to upgrade our security infrastructure to ensure we could better withstand external attacks ,” he said .
The challenge
About two years ago , Akubra realized that it had to improve the level of security it had in place within its IT infrastructure . The volume of cybersecurity incidents was increasing and staff were needing to cope with rising levels of malicious spam email .
The company was also facing a challenge when it came to its Wi-Fi infrastructure . Some existing access points had become increasingly unreliable and it was feared there was little protection from external attacks .
“ At certain times of the day , there would be interference and half our devices would lose their
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