Sportsbet.com.au Deploys Crossbeam's X-Series Platform.

Crossbeam Systems, Inc., a provider of next-generation security platforms for high-performance networks, announced that Sportsbet.com.au has successfully deployed its X-Series platform to ensure an uninterrupted and secure experience for users when betting online.

Year after year, the Company said Sportsbet.com.au, an Australian Internet betting and entertainment Web site, experiences tremendous growth in both the number of customers and transactions per second. During race days, Sportsbet.com.au sees massive spikes in traffic. The Spring Carnival horse races in 2010, for instance - Sportsbet.com.au's busiest period of the year - saw traffic peaks reaching 2,000 new connections per second. It is critical that the site offers visitors performance, quality of service and, most of all, high availability.

"Security is paramount to protecting our customers and the Sportsbet.com.au brand. We chose Crossbeam's X-Series because of its high-performance, best-of-breed security architecture and modular approach, allowing us to build redundancy at every level, scale easily and conduct maintenance without any service downtime," said Agustin D'Onofrio, IT operations manager at Sportsbet.com.au. "With Crossbeam, we are able to run a Check Point firewall and have the option to add other security applications to the chassis as needed. As we look to build out our security infrastructure, this level of flexibility is a major advantage."

According to a release, in the months leading up to the 2009 Melbourne Cup, Sportsbet.com.au was one of many Internet gaming sites that experienced a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. While Sportsbet.com.au only saw service degradation for an hour or two, the IT organization sought to upgrade its firewalls - the first line of defense - and ensure the entire security infrastructure had the capacity, scalability and intelligence to handle any future attacks, without interruption of service.

The Company noted that Sportsbet.com.au initially started with an X-Series chassis combined with a Check Point firewall for the 2009 Melbourne Cup. The success of that deployment led Sportsbet.com.au to upgrade to Crossbeam's X-Series, the X80 - offering the highest levels of performance with a modular 14-slot chassis that can run up to 10 applications and scale to inspect a real-world mix of traffic at speeds up to 150 Gbps of throughput. Despite the heavy spikes in traffic experienced during the 2010 Melbourne Cup, Crossbeam delivered seamless and secure protection.

"The X80 platform exceeded our expectations," added D'Onofrio. "Our firewall CPU utilization during the busiest period was less than 10 percent, and feedback from customers was that the Sportsbet.com.au site was just as quick during the Melbourne Cup race as any other time during the year - making this a win-win situation for everyone."

"The growing popularity of online gambling makes it extremely important for brands such as Sportsbet.com.au to safeguard the experience for users," said Jim Freeze, Crossbeam's vice president of marketing and business development. "Not only do they have to deploy strong protection, they have to ensure their site can handle the massive influx of traffic during events. Sportsbet.com.au's use of the X-Series offers the best example of what the platform is designed to deliver - a high-performance, best-of-breed security architecture that lets customers enable their business through smart and scalable security."

More information:

www.crossbeam.com

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