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| Secure Designs manages GTA’s operations | | October 06, 2009 (USA) |  |
 Global Textile Alliance Inc. is a seven-year-old joint venture designed to unite the world's most innovative textile mills under a single brand. The alliance offers domestic and foreign mills the opportunity to band together and market materials under the Global Textile Alliance brand name and is headquartered in Colfax, NC.
With 200 employees and locations in both North Carolina and China, the company relies on its robust IT network to enable seamless communications and transaction processing, and from its early days has looked to Secure Designs, Inc. to manage, monitor and update its network security functions. The company uses TZ Series firewalls from SonicWALL to secure its US and international operations.
IT Director Jay Gammon, formerly an IT executive at a prestigious US foods company, joined GTA almost two years ago. His considerable technical expertise has proven invaluable as the company continues to expand, with each day bringing a new set of IT challenges. "Every day is different," Gammon commented. "My role involves supporting corporate business requirements as well as day to day user issues, problem solving, ad hoc projects and research. The company constantly looks for opportunities to do things more efficiently, while working within the widely varied technical capabilities of our customer base."
Familiar with all the latest security protocols and processes from his previous role, Gammon saw immediately on joining GTA that SDI had a robust security infrastructure in place -- "everything that I would have used myself," he confirmed.
GTA's top IT security objectives are proactive intrusion detection, closing holes against hackers, identifying and preventing hacking attempts as soon as possible, and blocking the huge amounts of spam -- all without inhibiting users from being able to access the network from anywhere in the world.
GTA has two manufacturing operations in North Carolina, an operation in Shanghai plus partners elsewhere in China, and sales people traveling throughout the US. The company runs about 50 terminals in total, for function including order management, shipping, invoicing and accounting. "Network downtime is to be avoided at all costs," Gammon said. "We maintain spare equipment to ensure the network is always up and running. Although there's a considerable time difference between China and the US, SDI has always been very responsive to our needs on both sides of the world."
Security is one of the most complex and dynamic areas of IT, and Gammon observed that being able to rely on SDI for this function frees him from having to hire staff or keep up-to-date with technology changes. "From a technology knowledge standpoint security is the one area that would take me the most time, so it is very cost effective to let SDI take care of that," said Gammon. "They keep their knowledge updated, and that's a tough job because the security appliance space is always changing."
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