Lax anti-virus security by exhibitors has made the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) to beef up its control of the network.

The exhibitors who include some of the worlds major IT companies, failed to secure their PCs on exhibition stands. In many instances they had not followed basic security advice, such as installing patches.

Two firewall systems have been purchased, Fortigate-800 from Fortinet. These use hardware anti-virus technology to detect viruses on the network in real time.

Previously, the NEC had no option but to disable exhibitors the internet connections. (Which we imagine did not impress the exhibitors or visitors.)

Due to the non-standard configurations required by exhibitors, traditional firewall solutions would not have been adequate.

Temporary IP addresses can be allocated by the NEC for access to the Internet connections.

The result according to the NEC is a complete elimination of viruses on the LAN.