Mölndals Stad (Mölndal municipality) has approximately 5000 employees and 10 000 students. In 2010 the IT department decided that 15 000 inboxes needed a new spam protection.

Anders Westerberg, now Head of IT Security in Mölndal, had built an open-source based solution that worked well. But for Annika Samuelsson, Head of IT development and maintenance, it was clear that they could not go on using a solution that only one person knew how to operate. Together with Anders she investigated possible replacements that could fulfill their wishes, and Halon caught their eye. The Halon software was then newly introduced to the market, and they saw an advantage in the company being open to a dialogue around how the product could be tailored to fit their needs.

The focus was of course on abiding by laws and regulations. Email sent to Mölndal municipality becomes public record and must be archived, even if it’s just spam. Stopping the email before it enters their system saves them that burden, and it’s also the procedure recommended by the organisation SKL (Municipalities and Country Councils of Sweden). Before implementing Halon, Annika and her team handled all spam quarantine, something that is now in the past. With the ”bulk” feature, an email manager will get a report on all blocked unsolicited email.

The result is very satisfying, says Annika Samuelsson

Introducing Halon was a quick process, and even though most of the work was done in-house they received some help from Halon support staff to do the fine tuning. Since becoming a customer, they have reached out a few times to address spam issues.

There have been incidents where we get spam that passes through the filter. But it’s always been very easy to get in touch with Halon and resolving the issues. Once it was actually as easy as a misunderstanding on which users that could report spam.

Mölndal municipality are subject to public procurement, and regularly has to compare their system to market competitors. But they have yet to find a product that solves their problems as effectively and smooth as Halon.

We feel very comfortable with what Halon provides us, and we would definitively 
recommend it to other governmental businesses.

Download case study (PDF).