Digital Arts Releases Case Study of i-FILTER Implemented at Bank of Yokohama
i-FILTER Ver. 10 Is Adopted as the Web Filtering Engine for
IIJ Secure Web Gateway Service
— —i-FILTER highly praised for its precise URL analysis and categorization— —

Information security solutions provider Digital Arts Inc. (headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan; CEO: Toshio Dogu; hereinafter referred to as "Digital Arts"; Code 2326) is pleased to announce that on August 6, it released a case study of the introduction of Digital Arts' web security product i-FILTER Ver. 10 (hereinafter referred to as i-FILTER) as the web filtering engine for IIJ Secure Web Gateway Service at the Bank of Yokohama, Ltd. (headquarters: Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture; President and Representative Director: Tatsuya Kataoka).

Bank of Yokohama That Has Been Making Increasing Efforts to Bolster Cybersecurity

The Bank of Yokohama is one of Japan's top regional banks, serving both Kanagawa and Tokyo prefectures. The historic bank also celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2020. The bank has secured a leading position among regional banks in both deposits and loans, and in 2016 merged with Higashi-Nippon Bank to become part of the Concordia Financial Group, the largest financial holding company of regional banks in Japan.
In recent years, the bank has been working to comply with the Japanese Financial Services Agency's Policy Approaches to Strengthen Cybersecurity in the Financial Sector and the credit card industry's Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), promptly developing a system to detect phishing websites that are designed to deceive banks. They have also launched their own Security Operation Center (SOC) and established CMS-CSIRT, an organization that promotes mutual cybersecurity support through the relationships and ties of regional banks.

Reducing Administrative Burden with i-FILTER

In order to unify management and the exit points of external connections, the Bank of Yokohama implemented IIJ Secure Web Gateway Service provided by Internet Initiative Japan Inc. and chose i-FILTER to power its web filtering engine.
i-FILTER has been installed on approximately 5,000 internet-connected computers at the bank, and is used by approximately half of the bank's employees who are allowed access to the Internet. In addition to the usage of categorized filtering, which blocks categories of websites unrelated to business operations, the bank adds domain information used for phishing and any other information they would like to block to the provided database list.
The bank says that in a world of devices connected to the internet, web filters are essential for security. They also say that i-FILTER employs a database that has analyzed and categorized all URLs, which helps administrators reduce the amount of work required to run the system.
In addition, administrators have praised its UI on the administrative screen that allows for comments on added domains, resulting in easy reference and easy management even by multiple administrators.
To supplement the service, a system has also been created to analyze the access logs logged by i-FILTER and check for unauthorized external access.
The bank says that it will continue to deepen its knowledge of new services and security tools and practices to improve the working environment of its employees.

Read the full Bank of Yokohama case study(in Japanese only):▶https://www.daj.jp/bs/case/case98/