Solution: Security
Field: Manufacturing
The best business relationships are ones that grow together, and the relationship between Advizex, its technology partners, and one recent customer in the automotive sector is a shining example of this.
A new global leader in the motorcycle and automotive industry
The result of a recent merger of four leading automotive parts manufacturers, this Advizex customer has positive goals for itself and theautomotive industry: contribute to the planet, expand its global leadership, and create value.
In addition to efforts to reduce traffic accidents and improve the safety of its vehicles, the newly created company has its sights set on achieving carbon neutrality at its factories by 2030, and a 50% reduction in emissions generated from its products.
The combined venture is huge; the combined annual sales of its predecessors of $17 billion makes the company one of the largest auto suppliers in the world. But with such a massive merger — consolidating 123 companies across 27 countries and a workforce of nearly 90,000 — the newly formed global “mega supplier” needed to take a hard look at the state of its network and security.
A need to scale, standardize and consolidate.
Not surprisingly, many of the various companies that combined to make up the new automotive giant, had their own technology systems and infrastructures, including network endpoint and security solutions. This made the management of enterprise-wide security more complex, costly, and time-consuming, and prevented the company’s director of security from easily having the visibility needed to respond rapidly to threats, and to enforce and manage device and group policies.
The new company’s security lead had a vision for the business that saw the elimination of the overlap, inefficiencies, data silos and fractured endpoint estate — while improving visibility.
He knew he needed help and having worked with a member of the Advizex team before, he knew he could rely on the level of expertise and service he’d receive. He reached out to the firm to verify and confirm his plans and to build a use case.
He had recognized a need to adopt a new cybersecurity solution for endpoint detection and response, as well as a security and asset management platform to provide the unified view that would help the company achieve a host of goals: cost savings, accelerated compliance, stronger security posture, improved resource efficiency, and, importantly, better executive-level visibility.
He turned to Advizex for its recognized expertise to find the ideal solutions to meet his many goals, but also to evaluate gaps in the existing strategic plan and advise on opportunities to build on them.
“They were looking to us for strategic partnership, a partner and adviser with the expertise to come in evaluate solutions but also validate concepts and ideas around what was needed to consolidate and improve security across the company,” said Dave Gibbons, Vice President andGeneral Manager for the Ohio Valley at Advizex.
Selecting the perfect solutions and building POCs.
Time was of the essence, and the Advizex security and networking specialists acted fast, reviewing the security lead’s top priorities and the existing solutions in place, and recommending platformbased solutions to replace a range of point solutions implemented across the enterprise.
Many of the previous security products used by the companies forming the new company operated in silos, reducing overall visibility into the network, and some were becoming out-of-date, which would limit their ability to help combat today’s more sophisticated malware and cyberattacks.
Working with the security lead and his team from across the four former companies, Advizex helped narrow down the selection of a top-tier endpoint protection solution to Deep Instinct’s AI-based cybersecurity platform. For converged endpoint management, the team selected the Tanium platform, which can be used to discover, assess, and patch, as well as to detect exploits and monitor assets in real-time from a single pane of glass. The two vendors were chosen based on their robustness and roadmaps, how well they met the company’s specific requirements, but also their complementary strengths and interoperability.
“They needed a more robust solution than they had,” Gibbons said. “One that had a lot of ongoing research and development, that would be able to grow alongside the company, and scale to cover its extraordinary global presence.”
Advizex worked closely with the company’s SecOps, infrastructure and operations teams, and its partners at Deep Instinct and Tanium to develop a solution that would encompass the entire company’s overarching security needs. The team of partners rapidly developed Proof of Concepts to demonstrate the new solutions’ feasibility, the positive impact they would have on the automotive leader, and how they line up with company objectives.
The proof is in the protection.
Implementation of the solutions is still ongoing, and Advizex continues to operate as the glue between partners Deep Instinct, Tanium, and the company itself, ensuring no stone is left unturned and the platforms and business goals are perfectly aligned.
The POCs have proved invaluable tools. The Deep Instinct POC was able to identify and help remediate incidents that would have been missed with the previous cybersecurity solutions. The extensive Tanium POC was able to prove that everything could be brought under the management and visibility of a single platform without additional infrastructure needed, all using a single-agent deployment. Tanium has provided the organization’s full estate with a visibility and control plane that was previously compartmented across the original businesses. The new consolidated business now has one single pane of glass to manage both security and operational activity across Linux, Windows and Mac. Eliminating siloed point solutions has given the company a deep understanding of organizational risk that was previously unattainable due to segmentation of data and operational tooling.
The improvement in the company’s visibility into its network has been tremendous. A Business Value Assessment (BVA) developed in conjunction with Tanium helped map out potential vulnerabilities and illustrate the deep level of detail they would experience from the platform in the final production environment.
Growing opportunities.
With the work underway on endpoint protection and management solutions, Advizex and its new customer are now investigating other areas they can improve the company’s cybersecurity posture, for example, perimeter security like firewalls.
So satisfied with the results of their initial work with Advizex, the security lead has introduced the firm to others within the company’s IT groups. Recently, Advizex successfully bid to work with the company’s infrastructure and helpdesk teams to provide network monitoring and related managed services. And like meeting this automotive giant’s unique security needs, Advizex will be with them every step of the way.