U.K. Beverage Company Goes from Patching Security Holes to Preventing Them from Ever Appearing

Not long ago, this U.K. beverage manufacturer had only the barest of IT security solutions to safeguard its manufacturing and back office IT operations. Today, the company proactively protects the IP behind its recipes for popular beverage brands with the help of Forcepoint.

Based in the heart of Devon in southern England, this company doesn’t require the flashiest, most expensive security solutions. But its IT Manager believes his company can stay ahead of an evolving threat environment without breaking the bank to do it. When he joined several years ago, he selected Forcepoint to partner on a holistic security solution that could grow with the company’s evolving IT needs.

Going from security novices to experts

Today, the beverage company deploys an integrated IT security architecture that includes Forcepoint Web Security, Email Security, Advanced Malware Detection (AMD), and Data Loss Prevention (DLP). And after recently shifting application hosting to the cloud, the company added DLP Cloud Apps extension.

But the Devonshire beverage maker wasn’t always this sophisticated about security

When the IT manager first joined the company, it was experiencing continuous attacks from external web and email threats masked as coming from an insider in order to infiltrate and steal sensitive data.

The Office 365 email client was filtering some, but not all of the malwareinfected emails by sending them to “junk” folders. The company had no solution in place to stop employees from clicking on suspicious links and visiting infected websites.

It was time for a more serious approach to web and email security.

Building a new security posture from the ground up

The IT manager decided his first task was to get a handle on the persistent threats which often arrived in the form of sophisticated ransomware and other advanced malware, with delivery methods that shifted between web and email channels in search of a weakness. A few examples he saw firsthand within a few weeks of joining the company were suspicious URLs sent to employees from Director-level positions and invitations to download a phony PDF invoice.

Some bad emails were being quarantined, but the company didn’t have an engine in place to effectively identify or classify information coming in via email. It also lacked a solution that delivered real-time security ratings to web and email traffic.

The company needed to build a security posture from the ground up—starting with web—with only a small team to work with, no space for additional hardware, and limited budget. After evaluating several options, a Proof of Concept with Forcepoint Web Security Cloud was all that was needed to pick the security partner the company has stuck with since 2015.

“The Forcepoint solution offered more options around the cloud. Rather than just black-listing or white-listing URLs and email addresses, Forcepoint ticked all of our boxes for functionality,” he said.

Building up from the basics

Since that initial rollout of Web Security Cloud, the company has regularly layered in more Forcepoint security solutions as the company itself has grown.

The beverage maker went on to add Forcepoint Email Security Cloud and Forcepoint Advanced Malware Detection for Email, incorporating cloud-hosted protection that surpasses the capability of on-premises sandboxes. The IT Manager called it a “no-brainer” for his organization.

The Crediton Dairy team took advantage of an easy cloud deployment by simply adding the Forcepoint Email Security Cloud to the already deployed Forcepoint Web Security Cloud for coordinated defenses against advanced threats. The deployment of Forcepoint Email Security Cloud was accomplished overnight—literally. The IT team began the process on a Friday evening and finished Saturday.

Growing in size, growing in safety

The company is again going through a significant growth spurt, recently opening a new £12 million factory with plans to keep getting bigger.

It was important to keep scaling IT and security to keep up with existing risk areas, but also to anticipate what new risks could develop into bigger threats down the road. “We want to be a proactive company in terms of our IT and how we use it to grow the business. We like to invest in technology to solve things before they become a problem,” he said.

Forcepoint DLP and DLP Cloud Apps, the company’s latest additions to its security framework, have helped the company in the second phase of its cloud transition become more proactive about stopping data loss in its tracks.

DLP has already helped prevent some costly accounts payable errors, according to the IT manager. “I believe I’ve chosen the best DLP software on the market with Forcepoint,” he said.

The upshot is that the can focus on growing market share within the food and beverage market, secure in the knowledge that Forcepoint is safeguarding it against costly and reputation-harming cyberattacks and data loss.

“We’re protected and it’s one of those insurance policies that every company needs,” the IT Manager said.