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Grupo Bancolombia

The secure flow of data

Industry

Financial Services

Headquarters

Colombia

Overview

With 140 years of experience, BANCOLOMBIA is the largest bank in Colombia, offering a wide range of financial products and services to a diversified individual and corporate base of more than 9 million customers. BANCOLOMBIA delivers its products and services via its regional network comprised of Colombia´s largest non-government-owned banking network with 1,070 branches, 4,524 ATMs and 4,202 banking agents. The bank is also in Central America, with Banagricola (El Salvador), BAM (Guatemala), and Banistmo (Panamá), with off-shore banking subsidiaries in Panama, the Cayman Islands and Puerto Rico. Together, BANCOLOMBIA and its subsidiaries provide stock brokerage, investment banking, leasing, factoring, consumer finance, fiduciary and trust services, asset management, and insurance, among others.

“We are a Colombian financial group with regional presence, supporting the dreams of the people, and we seek to establish lasting relationships with the people based on trust, closeness, respect, inclusion and warmth.”
— José Ignacio Rojo Restrepo

Challenge

The Internet has become an increasingly dangerous source of infectious malware for users due to the widespread adoption of Web applications and the popularity of social networking sites that make it very difficult to control threats. Bancolombia has more than 15,000 employees and maintaining the navigation of this large number of users was a major challenge for the organization. The company needed to control the use of content on the Internet and ensure the bandwidth of business applications without disrupting the end-user experience. However, maintaining a controlled and secure environment across the entire organization could jeopardize basic business operations. It was crucial to ensure granularity in policy management while permitting the use of appropriate Internet content.

For these reasons, the organization needed to focus on a single tool that would align with business security policies and would supply all needs. The tool would need to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of managing Internet access.

Solution

Previously, the bank had a legacy version of Forcepoint integrated with content filtering. In November 2012, based on a good relationship and results with Forcepoint, Bancolombia took advantage of the new features offered by Forcepoint Web Security. The bank decided to deepen the relationship and improve the level of support. Forcepoint allowed it to improve the level of safety, reduced the time and cost of incident management, and allowed the bank to take advantage of new features offered by a new infrastructure.

“Forcepoint Web Security prevents data loss and enables regulatory compliance through an advanced level of technology for online security and intelligence threats.”
— José Ignacio Rojo Restrepo

Product installation time was short, taking into account the size and dispersion of users at the corporate level. In the first phase, Forcepoint established a pilot to test the end-user experience and fine-tune policies affecting specific business applications.

The move to production was completely transparent to end users. There were no significant incidents or impacts on the daily operations of the organization. The Forcepoint solution is a unified security solution. For Bancolombia, Forcepoint Web Security radically changed the security landscape with advanced defenses against malware, phishing, and data theft. Additionally, it protected the organization from a single control console, providing consistent forensic reports. Grupo Bancolombia headquarters, branch offices, and mobile users are now protected from data loss, and regulatory compliance is enabled through Forcepoint.

Results

Forcepoint enabled an increased level of productivity, allowing Bancolombia the use of social networks as a corporate tool without compromising safety and control. It has allowed for control protocols, prioritizing the use of bandwidth. The solution has been able to detect advanced threats while preventing the leakage of files containing passwords or encrypted with nontraditional tools. Forcepoint now sets policies to control critical information that can be transmitted through the Web. Forcepoint is a modular tool that has the ability to be managed in an integrated manner from a single console.

“Since the implementation, we have not had any episodes of infection from web pages with malicious content.”
— José Ignacio Rojo Restrepo

For Bancolombia, this was an impactful accomplishment because it allowed a reduction in costs due to the decreased loss of information through the centralized management console. Bancolombia has had several benefits such as controlling navigation to HTTPS sites, scanning Web threats in real time, and controlling digital certificates for websites. In addition, Forcepoint generated new business through safely managing social networking accounts and allowing secured access to previously blocked Internet applications.

With Forcepoint Web Security, Bancolombia has seen an increase in granularity across all user access to Web 2.0 sites. Control protocols and bandwidth prioritization now regulate traffic that does not directly reach the proxy. Forcepoint has been able to provide a security solution which makes the detection and prevention of confidential data leakage a top priority for Bancolombia. The implementation of the solution has drastically increased the level of productivity within the company. While providing a high availability of services, Forcepoint Web Security permits the rational use of Internet resources, efficiently manages bandwidth, and has improved Bancolombia’s overall security network infrastructure.

“Forcepoint’s product continues to help generate an appropriate use of corporate resources by improving employee productivity and keeping users away from any potential threats that are on the Internet.”
— José Ignacio Rojo Restrepo

Grupo Bancolombia has relied on Forcepoint security solutions since 2005.

Grupo Bancolombia

With 140 years of experience, BANCOLOMBIA is the largest bank in Colombia, offering a wide range of financial products and services to a diversified individual and corporate base of more than 9 million customers.