Case Study

UST helped global financial institution save millions with fortified security posture

This financial institution wanted to improve its security posture across its enterprise, including its far-reaching 5,000+ branch locations. UST helped build a security operations center into its IT ecosystem, providing end-to-end visibility across its entire network to monitor potential attack vectors and saving the company millions of dollars in remediation costs.

CLIENT

Headquartered in India, this financial institution has operations in several countries across Asia, the Middle East, the U.K., and the U.S. The company operates over 5,000 branch locations, employs 40,000 people, and serves over one million customers.

CHALLENGE

Disparate approach to security operations created vulnerabilities

This multifaceted financial institution wanted to improve its security posture across its enterprise, including its far-reaching 5,000+ branch locations. Without a centralized security operations center (SOC), the company knew it was at risk of cyber-attacks. To complicate the situation further, many branches were in areas with poor internet access. The IT team managed security using a remote desktop application as a workaround to the spotty internet connectivity. The company needed to centralize its disparate data centers and modernize its outdated security infrastructure.

TRANSFORMATION

New centralized data center with SOC layer fortified security posture

The financial institution engaged with UST to design and deploy a centralized data center with an SOC framework connected to the company’s private cloud. A newly architected software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) protects the entire organization using a managed SOC approach. The branches are protected by firewalls and additional security policy controls built into the SD-WAN and endpoint detection and response (EDR) for continuous, automated, real-time monitoring with endpoint analytics and rules-based responses to security threats. The cybersecurity operations team can centrally manage, monitor, and remediate security following best practice policies and processes across the company’s large geographical footprint.

IMPACT

Continuous, automated, proactive security monitoring prevents financial losses

By building a security operations center into its IT ecosystem, the company has end-to-end, around-the-clock visibility across its entire network to monitor potential attack vectors proactively. The cybersecurity operations team can prevent and mitigate threats using industry standard KPIs, such as preparedness levels, hardware and software asset and configuration monitoring, and mean time to detect and resolve (MTTD, MTTR) metrics. The newly fortified security posture is potentially saving the company millions of dollars in remediation costs, helping to protect its reputation, and ensuring customers have a positive experience with the financial institution.

RESOURCES

https://www.ust.com/en/what-we-do/digital-transformation/managed-security-services

https://www.ust.com/en/industries/financial-services