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Customer Secures Their Network from Cradle to Grave

Case Studies

Organization

• Leading financial services institution in  the United States

 

Challenges

• Too many vendor defects getting into production network 

• Extremely complex inline security deployments

 

Solutions

• BreakingPoint security testing and IxLoad performance modules for Keysight PerfectStorm 

• iBypass 40-10 switch 

• Vision One packet broker

 

Results

• Created center of excellence to validate network changes 

• 120 vendor code defects eliminated per year 

• Saved $800K in first year 

• Security tools now connected in a high availability configuration 

 

Leading Financial Institution Implements Lifecycle Approach to Maximize Network Security

The customer is a leading financial institution based in the United States providing international banking services. They wanted to improve network security in two ways: by validating configuration changes before they were inserted into the live network and by implementing a robust, high availability (HA) inline security solution to reduce risk. 

 

Securing the company network is important for any business. But in the financial services industry, it is an absolute necessity from monetary, consumer confidence, and reputation perspectives. One solid defense mechanism is to secure the network using a lifecycle approach. 

 

During each phase of a network’s lifespan (pre-production, installation and turn-up, production, change management, and decommissioning), there are distinct vulnerabilities and threat vectors that can be exploited. In this case, the financial institution’s IT team sought to use a lifecycle approach with Keysight products to ensure a solid defense against the multitude of threats. The team engaged Keysight to help on three fronts: network performance testing, network security validation, and inline security tool deployment.

 

Validating the Initial Design

The customer used the Keysight BreakingPoint solution to validate new network architecture designs against various known security threats (such as DDoS, malware, etc.) in their pre-production lab. This involved testing their new next-generation firewalls, wireless access firewalls, IPS devices, load balancers, and a variety of proxy devices to ensure that they performed according to vendor specifications. The test efforts revealed that several of the customer’s devices did not work as the vendor stated. According to the “The Keysight BreakingPoint solution enabled us to test all of our security devices in the lab before we actually deployed them. I was able to see exactly how they would perform in the network and adjust my security architecture to maximize effectiveness,” said the manager of network operations. Because of the Keysight BreakingPoint data, the security architecture was adjusted before any weakness was exposed externally. 

 

To consolidate their testing capabilities, the financial institution decided to upgrade to the Keysight PerfectStorm solution, which allowed them to keep using the performance tools that they were using (such as IxLoad) and combine them with new capabilities, such as Keysight BreakingPoint, all in a single solution. Now they could test their multi-level, layered security solution design and components against a full spectrum of L2–7 traffic and run it out of a single port using the Keysight PerfectStorm platform. 

 

“The combined Keysight BreakingPoint and PerfectStorm solution allows me to find about 120 flaws a year that I can clearly isolate to vendor equipment. This saves me weeks of troubleshooting time in the production network,” stated the manager of network operations.

 

According to the Ponemon Institute, a flaw detected in development costs $80 per defect to fix. If detected in QA, it costs $960 to fix. If detected in the production network, it costs $7,600 to fix. By identifying 120 flaws in the lab before they made it to the production environment, the customer was able to save approximately $800,000 in the first year.

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