Today’s organizations face cybersecurity challenges on multiple fronts. Many applications and workloads have moved to the cloud while employees now work in hybrid and remote environments – connecting to the network from anywhere and on any device. What’s more, new threats continue to emerge as attacks grow more sophisticated every week, often with AI as a driving force.
Building a strong risk posture in today’s threat landscape requires a shift away from traditional cybersecurity defenses. Security architecture, built on point products, is complex and lacks the integration needed to stop sophisticated zero-day attacks. Cybersecurity consolidation, combines best-of-breed tools into unified security platforms, leverages shared threat intelligence across the enterprise to identify attack patterns and enables rapid incident response.
We’ve connected with several customers in different industries across the world to see how Palo Alto Networks platforms enhanced their risk posture, elevated business value, and delivered a strong return on their investments. Here is a look at organizations in mortgage, life insurance and semiconductors.
1. Better
Better is a homeownership company founded in 2014 that supports multiple aspects of the homeownership journey – from mortgages to insurance and repairs. The company handles massive volumes of highly sensitive customer data, in addition to intellectual property critical to its business operations.
Challenges
Like many organizations, Better’s security team faced a tidal wave of threat alerts that took days and weeks to triage manually. Ali Khan, CISO at Better, says:
“As we scaled up, we couldn’t keep up with all the threats that were coming in. A lot of them were rinse-and-repeat alerts. It’s not something we really needed a human for; you can automate this.”
They also needed to transition to a cloud-based VPN to allow thousands of employees to connect remotely and work from anywhere. Perhaps most importantly, they needed to secure highly valuable customer and company data.
Business Impact
Khan’s team chose to consolidate their security footprint with a suite of Palo Alto Networks solutions. The team automated 90 percent of alert responses, cutting investigation time from hours to just minutes with Cortex XSOAR. This freed up the team to work on more complex, future-facing tasks. Prisma Access also enabled Better to secure access and quickly pivot to remote work for all employees without compromising the security of its people, data and applications.
Read more about the platforms and services Better chose to improve its security outcomes.
2. Resolution Life
Resolution Life is a life insurance service provider in Australia that manages a large number of businesses and portfolios. When it acquired another life insurance company, AMP Life, the security had an opportunity to build a security infrastructure from the ground up.
Challenges
The financial services industry grapples with some of the strictest cybersecurity regulations compared to other industries. At the same time, a change in market trends meant that Resolution Life needed a partner to secure its journey while modernizing the business. Rob Jillson, Head of Cyber Security at Resolution Life Australasia, says:
“We needed to ensure that we safeguarded our clients' confidential personal and health information while adhering to a strict regulatory environment. Being compliant does not guarantee that information is secure and being secure does not guarantee compliance with regulatory obligations.”
Jillson’s team also wanted to streamline investigation and incident response so IT personnel could focus on larger value-added tasks. Results had to be quantifiable and backed by data for regulatory purposes.
Business Impact
Resolution Life chose to deploy a suite of Palo Alto Networks products for the completeness of our platform and the ability to integrate, customize and automate. Next-Generation Firewall, Prisma Cloud, Prisma Access and CDSS provided advanced threat protection and security stack reduction, while Cortex XSOAR gave security analysts full visibility across the network with automated threat detection and resolution.
The solutions also allowed Jillson’s team to implement “audit built-in” where defendable metrics could be generated in the event of regulatory scrutiny. This helped Resolution Life continue to safeguard customers’ personal and health information and keep up with the latest cyberthreats.
Read more about the platforms and services Resolution Life chose to improve its security outcomes.
3. Imagination Technologies Group
Imagination Technologies Group designs and licenses intellectual property processor solutions in the semiconductor industry. The company had always prioritized agility and innovation over data security, but security challenges were rapidly mounting.
Challenges
The entire organization needed a fresh take on cybersecurity, from tools down to culture. It never had a dedicated SOC, and multiple, disjointed point products made it difficult to get full visibility into the security posture. As an engineering-led organization, cybersecurity was viewed as a roadblock to processor development. Paul Alexander, Director of IT Operations at Imagination Technologies Group, says:
“We used to comment that cybersecurity was important until it was inconvenient. Nothing was allowed to impact engineering, and the perception was that restrictive cybersecurity controls did exactly that.”
Business Impact
Alexander’s team chose several platforms in the Palo Alto Networks portfolio to modernize their security architecture. ML-powered NGFWs were deployed across 14 sites, securing more than 1,000 staff and over 12,000 devices (many unmanaged). Cortex XSIAM provided security visibility across the organization to prevent the most advanced attacks. It also delivered automated threat detection and response, dropping the number of incidents per day from 175 to less than 30 and freeing the three-person security team from tedious manual resolutions.
In addition, Imagination took advantage of Unit 42’s Managed Threat Hunting, gaining 24/7 protection across the entire security environment. These deployments allow the organization to continue developing semiconductor technologies without compromising security features.
Read more about the platforms and services Imagination Technologies Group chose to improve its security outcomes.
Consolidation — Future-Proof Your Security
At best, multiple disparate security tools across your enterprise can cause lost productivity and an unmanageable web of features and vendors. At worst, those same tools can create gaps in your risk posture, allowing cybercriminals to exploit and breach your organization. But, with security consolidation, you get best-of-breed security tools that share threat intelligence, recognize attack patterns, and stop even the most sophisticated threats.
See more of what customers say about Palo Alto Networks platforms.