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Global Insurer Meets State Regulations for Secure Networks with NETSCOUT Cybersecurity Analytics
Technology Category
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
- Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Cybersecurity
Services
- Cybersecurity Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
The company’s Security Operations (SecOps) team faced new business and compliance management challenges that were surpassing current IT toolset capabilities. The New York State government had enacted requirements upon any financial institutions that required those businesses operating in NY to implement cybersecurity measures, report data breaches, identify whether the threat traveled past the point of initial infiltration, and provide associated network packet captures as further evidence of effective forensic security analysis used to successfully troubleshoot the breach. The company had to deploy a complete solution in an accelerated timeframe in order to meet a State-specified deadline for organizational compliance; otherwise, the business would be subject to government fines and adverse impacts to brand reputation. As part of strategic business initiatives, the company decided to move certain data center workloads to cloud-based Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure (Azure) platforms, as well as newly added Equinix co-location facilities. However, when an Equinix co-lo facility reported an outage with Azure services, the CISO learned the company’s existing IT toolsets lacked visibility into this new hybrid cloud environment necessary for troubleshooting and remediating performance anomalies, so that business services could be quickly restored for customers and users.
About The Customer
This international insurance and financial services company is a market leader, administering more than $500 billion in assets for 9 million customers. The company offers a broad portfolio of financial and benefit plan solutions for individuals, families, and businesses. They provide a wide range of retirement savings and income plans, as well as life, disability, and critical illness insurance.
The Solution
The company is addressing their emerging security, compliance, service assurance, and cloud monitoring challenges by leveraging the NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform across US business operations. In initially tackling the State’s security compliance challenges, the SecOps team installed InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) appliance technology to gain the visibility they had lacked into networked application traffic coming in and out their data center environment. The ISNG uses integrated NETSCOUT Adaptive Service Intelligence (ASI) technology to convert the company’s packet-based traffic into smart data, with nGeniusONE’s performance analytics using this metadata to provide real-time visibility required to ensure security and manage business service performance. The SecOps team has eased the evidentiary compliance process with the State by using nGeniusONE contextual drill-downs from Service Dashboard and Service Monitor views into corresponding, specific session-level analysis, ladder diagrams, with hop-byhop transaction analysis to help identify specific issues and packet-level analysis and forensic evidence collection relevant to the issue at hand, based on the initial nGeniusONE workflow. Additionally, the SecOps team is now gaining critical visibility into company workloads throughout the Azure and AWS platforms, with nGeniusONE using ISNG technology installed at the Equinix co-lo and ASI-generated smart data for proactive monitoring of the business services operating in this hybrid cloud environment.
Operational Impact
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