IT consulting

Fundamental Data

Fundamental Data, based in London, is the leading UK supplier of data on closed-end funds to the investment industry. They serve clients such as the Financial Times and Association of Investment Trust Companies. Their data products are typically available to their clients via the Internet.

SNNet was contacted to design and implement better Internet access to the company's data products. We provided a firewall and virtual private network (VPN) solution (WatchGuard Firebox III hardware was used) in order to enable their customers to securely access the data over the Internet using PC Anywhere's remote access feature.

The task was to seamlessly implement the new configuration and replace the old system based on pools of ISDN modems, which was cumbersome and expensive to maintain. The firewall uses a three-legged configuration where company's web, FTP server and client's PC Anywhere hosts are placed in the 'demilitarised zone' (DMZ), which separates Internet exposed machines from the rest of the internal network.

Fundamental Data customers can now access the financial data in three ways, depending on customer's network security configurations:

- WatchGuard applet authentication
- remote user VPN
- SSH tunneling

SNNet continues to manage the system and provide support.