Leading European Insurance Agency’s Global Transformation Requires a Dynamic Security Partner to Match

Self-driving cars, insurance available at checkout from big box retailers like Walmart or internet retailers like Amazon, and the explosion of data on everything from what you ate for breakfast to how safely you drive are all disrupting the insurance industry. Self-driving cars alone could shrink the industry to less than half its current size within the next 25 years as cars become safer due to self-driving technology, according to KPMG.

Tesla is leading the way, as it often does, in demonstrating how the insurance industry could be disrupted not just by self-driving cars, but also new types of companies entering the field. The automotive leader has been selling insurance with its vehicles to lay the groundwork for a pricing strategy where the cost of coverage is included in the total purchase price.

All of these changes are forcing insurance companies like this European insurance leader to evolve. The company’s business actually has a global span—doing business in over 100 countries across five continents with more than 36,000 employees, plus thousands of affiliates serving over 30 million customers worldwide. It can’t afford to stand still. And according to the Director of Security and Digital Infrastructure, it isn’t.

“We are changing everything in the company—we’re changing the way we collaborate, we’re changing the way that we interact with 30 million customers,” he explained. “It’s not digital transformation—it’s just transformation.”

“The challenge we have is to evolve as a security organization,” he said. And the company needed a partner with a comprehensive security platform that could meet all its needs as it evolved.

A global partner to address global issues

One of the first areas the team tackled was a project to more easily and efficiently support the global span of the company. Its IT environment is complex with more than 60,000 computers, 20,000 servers, 43 datacenters worldwide. The company wanted to get a better handle on that complexity by moving business operations including email, HR, and CRM to the cloud. This meant sensitive customer PII would be stored and shared out of network, adding vulnerability.

The company needed to protect that information, while also adhering to EU’s GDPR as well as differing regulations in countries the company operates in. For example, Spain and Turkey require email to be hosted in country, while Malta does not. In addition, the company had security concerns around service interruption, ransomware attacks, personal data breaches, and phishing attacks including CEO fraud. The company needed to address all these issues within a budget that hasn’t kept pace with the transformation. Forcepoint fit the bill.

“Our strategy is to minimize total cost of ownership,” explained the director. “The ability to reduce the number of different vendors to be managed as well as the easy integration of Forcepoint solutions made it easy to sell to upper management and the board.”

A flexible, worldwide security platform for enhanced data protection, from email to applications in the cloud

The company’s first priority was to deploy Forcepoint Email Security Cloud in order to protect Office 365 email usage as well as the email of remote and mobile workers. The addition of Email DLP provides protection for data moving through the email channel. It allows the company to quickly deploy easy-to-use security controls to meet compliance and regulatory requirements and set up policies to match specific countries. Forcepoint Email DLP can also identify sensitive data within images, such as scanned data and screen shots, ensuring that images containing sensitive data attached to email will be detected and protected.

Next, the team rolled out CASB to enable secure access to cloud applications such as Office 365 and Salesforce, SAP SuccessFactors, and G Suite and to protect data being uploaded to and downloaded from the cloud. Forcepoint CASB provides protection for critical data and IP in the cloud, prevents bad actors from using compromised accounts to access cloud application data, and provides secure access for both managed and unmanaged devices. With Forcepoint CASB implemented for Office 365, Salesforce, and Amazon Web Services, the team has been able to utilize data logs to find and report on anomalous user behavior in order to improve security policies.

The transformation and partnership continue to chart a path to the future

Finally, the plan is to transition the 44,000 users protected with Web Security on-premises to Forcepoint Web Security Cloud to enable easier centralized management, protection for remote workers, and better scalability and velocity as the organization expands business operations. The shift to Web Security Cloud will allow the company to save time and money by eliminating its appliance footprint and the need for manual hardware and version maintenance. It will be able to deliver protection to its remote and roaming workforce, without impacting productivity.

The deep integration across Forcepoint products gives the company a solution that helps it not only achieve business outcomes today, but adapt security in the future to grow with the business.

“The customer and Forcepoint have a very good relationship at all levels,” Forcepoint Account Executive Nuria Andres explained. She meets weekly on site with the Architecture and Delivery teams to ensure the rollout is moving smoothly. And to ensure that Forcepoint is a transformation partner that can be relied on.