Overview
Our client is one of the largest energy delivery companies in North America, possessing specialized asset management skills to ensure the reliable distribution of electricity to consumers. The premier transmission and distribution business operates more than 139,000 miles of lines, powering over 400 communities. They were looking for a technology partner to help implement a vulnerability management strategy that would enable them to onboard 2,000+ devices to cover end-to-end critical infrastructure.
The Challenge
Lack of a proactive risk-based strategy
The energy delivery company was facing numerous security challenges that were hindering their vision for proactive risk management. These challenges affected a smooth operation of their extensive infrastructure and their reliability for consistent energy delivery. Their primary concerns included:
- A reactive approach to vulnerabilities and remediation, lacking a proactive risk-based strategy
- Insufficient integration between existing security technologies, leading to limited visibility of the overall threat landscape
- Reactive monitoring of internal and external threats offered limited insight into their overall security posture
- Security documentation, such as runbooks and standard operating procedures (SOPs), lacked full maturity and updates
The Objective
Enhanced security posture through a proactive strategy
Our client aspired to transition from a reactive approach to a proactive strategy for vulnerability management. They looked for a solution that would enhance threat visibility, establish proactive monitoring and offer a comprehensive security posture. Moreover, they aimed to onboard 2,000+ critical infrastructure devices under this integrated security umbrella.
The Solution
Deploying upgraded security monitoring practices
Considering our years of expertise in offering industry-specific solutions, our client selected HCLTech to address these needs. To centralize their security operations and fortify threat management, we crafted an encompassing plan that included:
- Conducting an in-depth current state analysis of their information security controls and processes to bridge any existing disconnects
- Implementing enhanced security monitoring measures to achieve mature, fine-tuned systems, in turn driving a significant reduction in false positives
- Introducing geo protection to shrink the threat landscape, limiting ingress and egress to and from whitelisted countries
- Implementing advanced malware protection on transient devices to enable encryption and offline threat prevention and logging
The Impact
Robust infrastructure and advanced monitoring
The implemented solutions led to significant improvements in our client's infrastructure and application security:
- Facilitated the onboarding of 2,000+ devices to cover end-to-end critical infrastructure, including vulnerability scanners and IAM systems
- HCLTech's best practices for vulnerability remediation tracking, patch governance and vulnerability reporting were adopted, leading to re-validation of the CMDB baselines
- Application scanning was introduced for in house and cloud applications, enabling better visibility and decision-making capabilities
- External threat intelligence was incorporated into the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system for sophisticated correlation against threats, risks and indicators of compromise (IOC)
- Real-time 24x7 security event monitoring was established, promptly detecting, preventing and responding to incidents
To conclude, this case demonstrates how merging expertise with a defined proactive approach can supercharge progress in information security. With the implemented solutions, our client now enjoys a consolidated, robust security infrastructure that is laser-focused on mitigating threats. This has played a critical role in enabling our client to continue delivering reliable power to hundreds of communities, thereby strengthening their hold in the energy sector.
