Case Study:
MeadWestvaco

Overview

MeadWestvaco Corporation (NYSE: MWV), provides packaging solutions to many of the world’s most-admired brands in the healthcare, beauty and personal care, food, beverage, media and entertainment, home and garden, tobacco, and commercial print industries. The company's businesses also include Consumer & Office Products, Specialty Chemicals, and the Community Development and Land Management Group, which sustainably manages the company’s land holdings to support its operations and to provide for conservation, recreation and development opportunities. With 20,000 employees worldwide, MWV operates in 30 countries and serves customers in more than 100 nations. MWV manages all of its forestlands in accordance with internationally recognized forest certification standards and has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for the sixth consecutive year. For more information, please visit www.mwv.com.

Challenge

As a company that prides itself on employing rigorous policies and procedures to ensure that their packaging solutions meet or exceed all relevant external safety standards, MeadWestvaco wanted to make sure their own internal business operations were as safe and secure as possible. They wanted to implement a solution that would not only address their need for secure data transmission but also work within their existing SAP infrastructure. With sales, manufacturing, and converting facilities on six continents and customers in more than 100 countries, they also needed a solution that would support a truly global and geographically dispersed workforce. While their existing SAP system provided standard File Transfer Protocol, MWV knew that was not enough.

Solution

To implement and enforce truly secure, end-to-end data security and transmission, they chose to implement both the SFTP Adapter and PGP Adapter Module for SAP NetWeaver, from Advantco. While PGP alone ensures that files are encrypted, and SFTP ensures that the transmission process is encrypted, together the two ensure that all files are completely encrypted from origination to final destination (user). With help from Advantco, MeadWestvaco was able to leverage this double-layered protection throughout their entire organization, and benefit from a seamless integration with their existing SAP infrastructure.

Advantco’s SFTP Adapter, which integrates with SAP® applications, provides a secure and managed data transfer alternative to traditional FTP and FTPS. Once implemented, the Advantco SFTP Adapter acts as a client to receive and send data from and to an SFTP server.

After a quick and easy implementation, MWV users can choose the Advantco SFTP Adapter from their list of available adapters in their SAP integration directory. Since the adapter uses all the existing functionalities of SAP NetWeaver PI, it delivers the same benefits as the standard SAP adapters, including but not limited to alerting, run-time workbench monitoring and channel monitoring. To address their specific security concerns, MWV can import public and/or private keys for SFTP into their standard J2EE keystore.

The Advantco PGP Adapter Module offer PGP/OpenPGP services on data exchanged through the SAPNetWeaver® Integration Server or the PCK. A PGP sender module signs, encrypts, and/or compresses message payloads, while the PGP receiver verifies, decrypts and/or decompresses message payloads.

With native integration with SAP NetWeaver, the modules follow the SAP NetWeaver XI/PI Adapter module standards. Installation of the modules is easy and quick, and can be plugged in behind or in front of any sender/receiver SAP XI/PI adapters, including non-Advantco adapters. The modules also support any data format, including flat files and binary data, and feature a versatile key management system for even more powerful protection.

Because both the Advantco SFTP Adapter and PGP Adapter Module are completely integrated in SAP NetWeaver and work within the SAP NetWeaver J2EE engine, the joint solution offers the ultimate in secure data transmission for SAP NetWeaver users such as MeadWestvaco.

Results

“We were committed to implementing and maintaining the most secure solution possible for data transmission here at MWV, but felt it was just as important to find a technology partner that understood SAP and could build a solution to meet our specific needs,” said Gloria Aleixo-Hall, vendor manager of Enterprise Information Systems, MeadWestvaco. 

“This joint solution from Advantco brings together the top encryption technology available and truly ensures that our data is secure every step of the way,” added Aleixo-Hall.