Coke Unbottles Web Potential

Staying competitive in the Internet Age requires overcoming some fears.

Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, once highly apprehensive about opening up its network to the Internet for fear of hacking attacks, is now doing things differently.

Driven by the need to communicate more efficiently with partners and suppliers, and the desire to boost sales opportunities, senior management at the bottler now views the Internet as a tool that provides competitive advantage.

Last month, the company activated T1 links to the Internet, scrapping an archaic private network that couldn't handle the burden of additional users.

To fortify the network from outside attacks, IT managers at the company are in the process of installing a firewall, as well as content-filtering and reporting tools.

The bottler is now better positioned to gauge Internet usage as well as determine who's trying to break in, said Warner Watkins, security specialist at the Charlotte, N.C., company.

“Management has been intentionally slow about moving to the Internet because it places a high value on the information on the internal network,” Watkins said. But now management realizes there are “solid business cases” for giving employees access to the Internet.

With 6,000 employees and 100 locations in 12 states, the $860 million company is the second largest bottler of Coke products. As a Coke bottler, the company receives concentrate from Coca-Cola Co. and adds water, sweeteners and carbonation. The bottler then places beverages in containers and distributes them to retailers and vending machines.

Web access already has made this process easier. For example, employees are using the Internet to access label suppliers' extranets to track inventory; other departments are ordering vehicles for the company online, Watkins said.

In addition, engineers in manufacturing can keep tabs on whether suppliers' equipment is Y2K-compliant. The company, for example, uses process controller valves from Allen-Bradley. With secure logons to a database at Allen-Bradley's site, Coca-Cola Bottling engineers can track which parts are compliant, Watkins said.

The sales force is driving the company to establish a business-to-business Web-commerce site. “Every mom-and-pop grocery is surfing the Web today,” and the sales force wants to capture that business, Watkins said.

The push toward the Web, however, hasn't blinded management to the need for security.

Coca-Cola Bottling's methodical approach gives users secure access to the Internet; the cornerstone of that strategy is the Axent Raptor Firewall. The company chose Raptor because it's an application proxy firewall that runs on Windows NT, the operating platform the company is standardizing on.

The Raptor firewall monitors and controls all incoming HTTP, FTP and SMTP traffic. The firewall also works with WebNot content-filtering software, helping to block viruses and malicious code.

Using the Telemate.Net reporting tool, Watkins can download audit log information from the firewall to his workstation to get a comprehensive look at Internet usage to determine if policies are being violated and the impact on bandwidth.

Moreover, he will be able to determine “who's rattling on the door,” trying to probe the network for a possible hack. Already he has seen attempts to get into the network from universities, with their telltale “.edu” domain names in the addresses.

The reports also will give Watkins a better sense of how he can deploy intrusion-detection systems to monitor suspicious activity in the future.

About 80 users now have Web access. That figure should reach 400 by the end of the year, he said.

“In the next couple of weeks, we will sign on more people based on business needs,” Watkins said.