Wireless Connectivity

INEA Protects Software, Increases Revenue with SafeNet's (News - Alert) Sentinel HASP

Based in Slovenia, INEA is a leader in the fields of industrial automation, process computer control and manufacturing informatics. The company has been involved in over 750 projects in the energy sector, and has sold more than 15,000 portable computers and several thousand automation equipment products. INEA’s products and solutions are sold to major Eastern European companies such as: Gorenje, Sava, Goodyear, Union Brewery, Acroni, and Kolektor Group.  Among its products, the KIBERnet Systems remotely manages electricity consumption and distributes generations across a network of industrial and commercial sites.

The company is software-intensive, and given the sectors it serves, has an intense interest in security and in the protection of its growing portfolio of intellectual property. In fact, as INEA began to expand globally into Southeastern Europe, Japan, Austria and Germany, the company came to realize that its homegrown licensing system was no longer sufficient.

INEA was also interested in finding a next generation flexible solution that would enable them to lower costs related to purchasing and maintaining multiple physical machines.

In addition, the company was preparing to make the move to utilizing virtualized servers. Since virtualized environments are susceptible to license tampering, INEA needed the added protection from a third-party licensing vendor. Furthermore, INEA suspected it was losing revenue because of its antiquated and inadequate protection. After careful evaluation INEA selected SafeNet's Sentinel HASP SL to address all of its requirements.

“After evaluating several vendors, we found SafeNet to have the most reliable solution within virtualized environments, possessing the greatest number of features,” explains Aleš Bertalanic, head of IT at INEA in a recent case study discussing the company’s implementation of the solution. “With Sentinel HASP SL, we get the best licensing solution with the world’s strongest protection against fraudulent use.”

Following the deployment of Sentinel HASP SL, INEA experienced a jump in the number of licenses sold, largely attributed to the additional security. The Sentinel HASP SL solution was able to increase INEA’s revenue, by increasing license compliance. 

Customers have also appreciated the added flexibility found in custom license models and virtualized protection. SafeNet Sentinel allows INEA to update licenses remotely, proving useful with a global customer base.

As INEA looks to the future, it’s confident in the security of its products thanks to SafeNet Sentinel HASP SL.