Ice Cream And Convenience Store Chain Keeps POS Systems Cool With Bit9 Parity

Stewart’s Shops, formerly Stewart’s Ice CreamCompany, is a popular chain of convenience stores selling frozen treats, gas, groceries, and food to go throughout upstate NewYork and Vermont. Founded in 1945 by the Dake Family, the Saratoga Springs, N.Y.-based company ownsmore than 328 stores and about 100 rental properties. The company is co-owned by the founders and its approximately 4,000 employees.Withmore than $1 billion in annual sales and sizeable charitable contributions, Stewart’s is considered a staple of the Northeast.

The Challenge

Like many merchants, Stewart’s Shops wanted to get ahead of PCI compliance and smooth out the auditing and reporting process.However,with more than 600 endpoint POS systems dotting the map in two states,manually managing security is incredibly onerous. Steve Bell, assistant network administrator, needed a way to automatically lock down these systems based on centralized policies.

“Our footprint covers a large area so we try to avoid sending IT people out for calls.Therefore, we need security tools that are transparent to the user,”Bell says.This requirement alone pretty much ruled out antivirus solutions as users and IT would have to frequently interact with the software.

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