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Making scorching desking safe and accessible on a worldwide scale
The primary rule of interviewing a CISO on the Australian division of Laing O’Rourke is that this: You possibly can’t dig deep into use instances or purchasers.
And this makes good sense, as a result of while you’re chargeable for securing essential infrastructure for an AUD $6 billion world building and engineering agency, with tasks starting from transport to protection, even scant particulars can result in cyberattacks.
Crafting safety for joint ventures, and a really distributed community
Regardless of the excessive stakes, Laing O’Rourke’s safety challenges are distinctly common – particularly post-2020, the place the world noticed a large increase within the sophistication and variety of DDoS, VPN, and different web-related assaults. And like peer corporations, the corporate wanted to set a agency basis to dam internet-based assaults on distributed infrastructure.
However right here’s the place issues are totally different. Due to enterprise necessities, Laing O’Rourke’s community atmosphere is complicated. The corporate usually works on what James Fields, Group Deputy CISO for Laing O’Rourke, calls “mega tasks,” joint ventures (JVs) with different corporations which are – to place it plainly – opponents.
“Being a building enterprise, bodily safety is an actual problem out on challenge websites. Typically, for a few of our larger-scale tasks, we discover ourselves in collaborative partnerships with our rivals,’” Fields commented. “At one second, they’re our companions in a challenge, and within the subsequent, they may very well be our opponents for recent contracts. By participating in these joint ventures, we’re successfully inviting our competitors into our community.”
So, it’s crucial that Laing O’Rourke delivers safe community entry to workers, purchasers and JV companions in a hot-desking atmosphere AND fulfill purchasers demanding adherence to totally different frameworks and certification. The corporate should additionally forestall menace actors — in addition to anybody who may benefit competitively, financially, or in another manner – – from accessing or exfiltrating data from the community.
They usually did it this by including two totally different Cisco options to the stack: Cisco Safe Firewall and Cisco Identification Providers Engine (ISE).
Streamlining safety within the face of pointless, time-consuming duties
Getting backing from management to spend money on the perfect site visitors and menace administration instruments can appear not possible for a lot of groups. Fortunately, Fields has enthusiastic backing from the board.
“My crew and I are really captivated with cybersecurity, and now we have the board’s assist not only for compliance’s sake (not simply performing a tick field train), but additionally for establishing the perfect practices and instilling a cyber-centric mindset all through the enterprise.”
However that doesn’t imply it’s been straightforward constructing that framework.
As a snapshot, earlier than Cisco ISE, Fields says, “Our three way partnership companions and purchasers had a possible threat of unintentionally (or intentionally) accessing our company community resulting from shared workplace house. This prevented enterprise agility, necessitating fastened desks. Consequently, IT needed to regularly reconfigure ports on challenge websites as workers assignments modified based mostly on challenge phases or collaboration wants.”
Growing these pre-designed workspaces based mostly on whether or not the person was from Laing O’Rourke, or a JV took valuable time and vitality that would have been used elsewhere. The Laing O’Rourke crew wanted clever automation to streamline the method.
Laing O’Rourke already had a number of firewalls in place, but it surely wanted a Cisco Safe Firewall to assist the corporate management community entry, forestall intrusions and exfiltration, filter URLs, and conduct deep packet inspection. In the meantime, Cisco ISE would assist wrangle all these three way partnership gadgets.
Because the Laing O’Rourke crew was already utilizing Cisco switches and was accustomed to how Cisco options work, it made the selection so as to add extra Cisco to the stack all that a lot simpler.
“We, like most enterprises, use Cisco switches at our core and on the edge. So it made sense to speak to Cisco about how they might assist us defend our community.”
Utilizing Cisco Safe Firewall to streamline entry and safeguard the community
Laing O’Rourke wanted bodily safety that would accommodate hybrid workers members and contractors by way of hot-desking (a number of employees utilizing a single bodily workstation) and attaining seamless connectivity and community administration was essential.
To deal with this, Laing O’Rourke turned to Cisco Safe Firewall, permitting the corporate to realize and keep the confidentiality, integrity, and availability — the coveted CIA triad — of knowledge. By successfully controlling community entry and stopping unauthorized information adjustments, Cisco Safe Firewall performed a pivotal function in safeguarding Laing O’Rourke’s community infrastructure.
Key stakeholders, together with Fields, emphasised the significance of Cisco’s wide-ranging menace intelligence. These updates ensured that the firewalls stay present with the newest menace and vulnerability signatures, reinforcing the energy and effectiveness of Laing O’Rourke’s safety measures.
By partnering with Cisco, Laing O’Rourke has enhanced its skill to determine and mitigate a variety of threats by utilizing superior options of Cisco Safe Firewall, together with intrusion prevention, URL filtering, and deep packet inspection capabilities.
The crew additionally used Firewall Administration Middle (FMC) dashboards to handle firewalls utilizing a single pane of glass, which was ultra-convenient once they wanted insights on intrusion occasions, potential threats, and geolocation. Due to the proactive safety measures carried out by way of Cisco’s Safe Firewall answer, Laing O’Rourke has skilled a substantial lower in web-related vulnerability assaults.
As soon as the Cisco Firewall was in place for Laing O’Rourke, it was able to do what it’s recognized for: serving to forestall DDOS, malware, VPN, and lots of different assaults.
“In terms of firewalling, we take a twin vendor method. Round 5 years in the past we went out to market to interchange our [competitor] firewalls. Given our constructive expertise with Cisco’s networking gear, Cisco FTD’s have been on our procuring listing,” Fields mentioned. “We nonetheless take a twin vendor method and Cisco remains to be serving to safe our edge.”
Including a zero-trust framework with ISE for identification
Cisco Safe Firewall has confirmed itself a formidable pressure to handle site visitors and block threats, with automated updates and frequent assault intel as a sweetener. However ISE has been a revelation for Laing O’Rourke, giving the crew a agency, assured hand when managing IP telephones, tablets, and laptops – all used to conduct enterprise.
“ISE was an actual recreation changer for us. It has reworked the way in which we function on challenge websites, negating the necessity for predefined workspaces based mostly on if the person was a Laing O’Rourke workers member, JV companion, shopper, or visitor, whereas concurrently growing safety of our company community”.
With ISE, ports will be configured to dynamically reconfigure a port based mostly on safety posture and machine possession, allowing entry to the best community segments on the proper time. This consists of entry to the corporate’s company wi-fi (and wired) networks, visitor Wi-Fi, and BYOD – together with operational know-how (OT) networks.
“Whereas ISE takes a little bit of effort to arrange proper, as soon as it up and working, it’s a really steady platform, straightforward to configure and integrates nicely with different safety platforms like Firewall Risk Protection (FTD) and cellular machine administration (MDM) options,” Fields mentioned.
If he needed to identify three issues that make Cisco ISE a strong answer for Laing O’Rourke, Fields spoke of dynamic profiling that detects machine sort and applies the best coverage, the MDM integration and compliance verify that makes certain gadgets are up-to-date, and anomalous behaviour detection.
In accordance with Fields, a few years in the past, a pen-tester found a technical hole that completely wanted to be closed. So now when an IP cellphone begins to speak as Home windows site visitors, for example, ISE catches it with behavioural detection.
“With the dearth of bodily safety on our challenge websites, together with actively inviting our opponents onto our community, looks as if a catastrophe ready to occur,” he mentioned. “Cisco ISE has confirmed to be a useful answer for segregating entry between our staff and our purchasers and companions, defending us from menace actors and rogue community gadgets.”
Cisco Safe Firewall and ISE save time and money
Many community and safety execs perceive how painful it may be to safe a community – particularly one which’s distributed. However with a Cisco Safe Firewall in play and ISE to handle BYODs, Laing O’Rourke’s networking crew has already seen a distinction.
To begin, these Monday morning calls about desk strikes and disrupted community entry aren’t any extra. Laing O’Rourke is saving minutes, hours, and days, whereas concurrently bolstering community safety: one thing that notoriously…takes time.
The person expertise has improved, and the crew has extra time to give attention to threats. Although Laing O’Rourke makes use of a twin vendor method, Cisco is the go-to for this essential, world firm, with ROI already evident as soon as the corporate’s different firewalls have been changed with Cisco Firewalls.
“The [competitor] firewalls have been considerably costlier and provided no extra performance. The alternative [Cisco] really saved us cash,” Fields mentioned. “What I can say is among the few issues that doesn’t preserve me up at evening is our community uptime or network-based safety — because of Cisco Firewall Risk Protection (FTD) and Cisco ISE.”
Wish to safe your group’s scorching desking?
Try Cisco Safe Firewall and (ISE) Establish Providers Engine — options Laing O’Rourke utilized to guard their community and folks. Study extra about how Cisco has helped different clients obtain Safety Resilience.
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