Information Guide

SCHEELS
Retail
SCHEELS Increases Security Effectiveness and Saves Costs
Since it’s founding in 1902, Scheels has
grown from three acres of potatoes to a
sporting goods chain with 26 locations
in 11 states, including the largest all-
sports store in the world. It’s an unlikely
trajectory but one that was propelled by
a commitment to customer service that
began with the retailer’s founder, Frederick
A. Scheel, and remains a cornerstone
for success.
Just as SCHEELS sporting goods experts
are dedicated to ensuring customers get
the most from their shopping experience,
SCHEELS IT experts Josh Diemert
and Perry Stockwell are dedicated to
helping the company get the most from
its infrastructure and resources while
protecting the company from cyber threats.
For years, SCHEELS relied on a vendor-
managed security solution that had
become costly, dicult to manage, and
used aging infrastructure. Set to open
two more stores by 2020, the company
realized that it needed to ensure that its
infrastructure could scale and keep pace
with both the dynamic threat landscape
and its growing business.
“Our vendor-managed solution was dicult
to work with and expensive,” explains Josh
Diemert, Lead Systems Administrator,
SCHEELS. “Every time we wanted to make
a change to a policy it could take up to a
day and it wasn’t always done correctly.”
But the prospect of moving away from
an outsourced model had to be carefully
considered. “Our IT team runs lean – we
needed a way to bring security in-house
without adding a whole lot of work for our
sta,” adds Diemert.
At the same time, the company was
considering a structural redesign that
would eliminate the need to backhaul
trac to the corporate oce, which would
improve service quality to its stores and
reduce bandwidth costs. Making this
change would also require that the team
have greater visibility and control over
Internet access at each store to manage
security in-house.
“When Cisco came out with the ASA
with FirePOWER™ Services and the
FireSIGHT Management Center we had
the centralized visibility and intelligence
we needed to manage security ourselves
with better results and less cost than our
previous vendor-managed solution could
provide,” says Diemert.
SCHEELS has nearly 80 Cisco ASA with
FirePOWER Services models deployed,
the vast majority being the ASA 5506-
X. In addition to the stateful rewall, the
team uses FirePOWER Services including
Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) for
Networks, URL ltering, Application Visibility
and Control (AVC), and NextGeneration
Customer Name: SCHEELS
Size: 6,000+ employees
Industry: Retail
Location: United States,
26 stores across 11 states
“When Cisco came out with
the ASA with FirePOWER
Services and the FireSIGHT
Management Center we had
the centralized visibility and
intelligence we needed to
manage security ourselves,
with better results and less
cost than our previous
vendor-managed solution
could provide.”
Josh Diemert
Lead Systems Administrator,
SCHEELS