Murphy Oil USA securely supports retail point-of-sale (POS) system, security camera and gas pump systems, all with the Bomgar solution.

Murphy Oil USA is using Bomgar’s solution to provide secure remote support to thousands of retail and point-of-sale (POS) systems.

Murphy USA Marketing Co. operates nearly 1,200 retail gasoline stations under the Murphy USA brand across 23 states in the U.S. These are high-volume, low-cost retail gasoline stations and convenience stores, primarily in the parking areas of Wal-Mart Supercenters.

Murphy Oil USA’s national support center operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The approximately 75 support representatives field 6,000 to 9,000 calls per week, helping the company’s busy stores operate smoothly. In addition to supporting the computer systems, the national support center handles any issue the local store may have, including electrical, plumbing, and other maintenance problems.

Prior to Bomgar, the support team used a number of different remote support tools that it found to be inefficient and cumbersome. The IT team wanted to standardize on a single remote support solution that could be used to troubleshoot all of its retail systems. Additionally, once the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was formalized, a PCI compliant remote support solution became a requirement.

“There are three core systems at our retail locations that we support remotely,” said Bryan Ogle, manager of retail infrastructure for Murphy Oil USA. “These are the point-of-sale (POS) computers that also control the fuel outside at the pumps, back-office computers for accounting and paperwork, and security machines that control the store video cameras. We used to use a number of different remote support tools, depending on which type of system we were working on. When the need for credit card PCI compliance arose several years ago, we began looking for a way to consolidate on a single remote support tool that could meet all of our needs, including compliance. That led us to Bomgar.”

Bomgar’s robust features have enabled Murphy Oil USA’s remote support team to troubleshoot and resolve issues more effectively, minimizing business interruption at local stores. “Our priority is to ensure the POS device is working so that we are not losing sales. One of the features that we find most valuable about Bomgar is that we do a lot of diagnostics behind the scenes using Bomgar’s Command Shell without having to interrupt the use of the POS device by the local cashier,” said Ogle.

Canned Scripts are another feature that has dramatically reduced resolution time for the remote support team. “The Scripts allow us to execute numerous routine commands with a touch of a button, which helps us ensure that the commands are executed accurately by our representatives and allows them to be performed much more quickly than if keyed-in manually. And Bomgar organizes all of our Scripts in a convenient, single repository,” Ogle added.

From a security perspective, Ogle can now control which systems a representative can access. “For example, we are able to restrict our loss prevention personnel so that they can only view the security camera systems. We also limit who has access to the POS machines,” Ogle said. “That gives us an added level of control and security.” Additionally, Ogle and his team have the ability to review each session, which is recorded and logged, to audit any action that took place for security and PCI compliance. “If we have a question about a POS device in the field, we can watch the videos recorded for any Bomgar session at that store and make a determination about what happened with respect to that device.”

Nathan McNeill, chief strategy officer at Bomgar, noted the importance of using a secure remote support solution. “Year after year, remote support and remote access tools are called out by industry experts as the top attack pathway used by hackers. Whether you’re supporting POS systems, desktops and laptops, or mobile devices, it’s imperative that you access them in a highly secure and completely auditable manner. Many organizations either don’t know what tools they are using or don’t know the security specifics of what they use, unintentionally putting their organization at risk.”

Consolidating on Bomgar has enabled centralized management and control over Murphy Oil’s remote support operation. Previously, support representatives had to use multiple tools, each with their own passwords and methodology—and each support representative needed to keep a list of IP addresses for all of the stores computers. Now with Bomgar, support representatives only have to learn one tool and comprehensive and efficient remote support is just a few clicks away.