Protect Critical & Operational Infrastructure
Case Study
INSURANCE/FINANCIAL
Business Background
PPS is the largest financial services company in South Africa that operates under the ethos of mutuality. Founded in 1941, PPS offers tailor-made insurance, investment, and healthcare solutions. As a mutual insurance company, members not only gain the protection provided by their policies, but also receive a share in PPS’s profits.
Overview:
Industry
- Financial Services
Challenge
- Complex and sophisticated threat
landscape - Key target industry for advanced
cyber-criminal - Large volumes of sensitive,
confidential customer data - Geographically diverse, hybrid
network infrastructure - Insider threats
Results
- Confidence in migrating to the cloud
- Real-time detection of and response to in-progress attacks
- Proactive rather than reactive cyber
defense measures - Total network visibility
Challenge
The company was bringing a new consumer product into the Canadian market. Given their historical performance they anticipated they needed to recruit 200 new sales people to adequately manage the launch and meet the sales forecast for this new product. The industry average annual salary and benefits per Sales Rep is high and includes a vehicle, perks, sales incentives and rewards.
The challenge: How to quickly hire “the right” Sales Reps; minimize hiring costs and attrition; maximize employee engagement, time to competence, revenue and profitability, and; measure the success of this effort over time.
"I can sleep again at night. We are confident that
if something comes in Darktrace will pick it up
immediately, Antigena will isolate it, and we can then take our time to resolve it."
Derik Scheepers, Head of IT Operations, PPS
PPS’s primary challenge was protecting its complex network infrastructure from the advanced cyber-criminals which characterize today’s evolving threat landscape. As the guardian of its customers’ personal data, PPS was especially concerned with data leaks and the reputational damage associated with a significant breach. PPS had numerous security measures in place, however, the company accepted that whilst traditional defences may keep some malicious threats out, they are not effective in
the face of novel external attacks and insider threats.
PPS was also keen to migrate parts of its infrastructure to the cloud to increase efficiency and cut costs, but recognized the new security challenges presented by the cloud. Accordingly, its security team sought a solution that could deliver cyber resilience and real-time visibility across its enterprise and cloud environments in a single pane of glass.
To safeguard its sensitive data and mitigate the security risks associated with migrating to the cloud, PPS’s security team saw the need to embrace a cyber defense technology that could autonomously detect and respond to cyber-threats in real time, without requiring lengthy configurations or constant maintenance.
Solution
Recognizing the potential of artificial intelligence to achieve this goal, PPS decided to trial Darktrace’s Enterprise Immune System with a four-week ‘Proof of Value’.
Powered by machine learning and AI, the Enterprise Immune System installed in under an hour and immediately started learning the normal ‘pattern of life’ for every user and device in the business. This evolving sense of ‘self’ allows Darktrace to detect novel threats and latent vulnerabilities which other tools miss, while providing complete visibility.
“The moment we saw what Darktrace can do, and how quickly it does it, everybody was sold,” said Derik Scheepers, Head of IT Operations, PPS.
PPS also activated Darktrace’s autonomous response solution, Darktrace Antigena. Like a digital antibody, Darktrace Antigena takes surgical action to contain in-progress threats within seconds. The technology works by enforcing the normal ‘pattern of life’ for a given user or device, while allowing normal business functions to continue without interruption.
For Scheepers, “Antigena has been a revelation, it’s so easy to stop anything on our network, even when our security team is away from their desks.”
Finally, PPS deployed Darktrace’s self-learning technology in its cloud environment to correlate insights across the entire organization, and detect and respond to subtle deviations indicative of a threat in the cloud. Through Darktrace’s Threat Visualizer interface, PPS gained complete visibility of network and cloud traffic in a unified view, and could investigate prioritized alerts before, during, and after the incident occurred.
Whatever the issue, wherever it is on our infrastructure, Darktrace will stop it spreading, buying back precious time for us to mitigate the threat entirely."
Derik Scheepers, Head of IT Operations, PPS
Benefits
Armed with Darktrace AI, PPS is confident that it can fight back against today’s most advanced attacks, from polymorphic malware and machine-speed threats, through to malicious insiders exfiltrating data from the cloud. “Whatever the issue, wherever it is on our infrastructure, Darktrace will stop it spreading, buying back precious time for us to mitigate the threat entirely,” commented Scheepers.
Darktrace’s cyber AI responds to threats as they occur in real time and has quickly become essential to PPS’s cyber security strategy. As Scheepers remarked, “The comfort that you get from having 24/7 active defence is like nothing else. Darktrace can really save your skin when you’re being attacked from all sides.”
Darktrace’s state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology gives PPS control and insight beyond their physical networks and into the cloud. “We have the Threat Visualizer displayed on the big screen in the office. We not only see all the threats, but see how serious they are, as well – everyone is blown away by it.”
“I can sleep again at night. We are confident that if something comes in Darktrace will pick it up immediately, Antigena will isolate it, and we can then take our time to resolve it.”
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