Global Transport Company Moves Firewall Changes Faster

Background 

A global transport and logistics company operates in nearly 100 countries and employs 50,000 people. From its 1000 offices, the company manages supply-chain solutions for thousands of customers all over the world each and every day.  

Found in virtually every industry, customers range from large international companies that require transportation services by sea and air to medium size business that ship mainly over the road. In addition, the company offers warehousing solutions on every continent to help customers with their logistics. 

Challenges 

Operating four major data centers on four continents, the security team’s daily tasks had become overwhelming. For the last several years, the company invested heavily in its rapidly growing IT and network security staff, but at its current size and level of activity, finding enough experienced staffers was practically impossible and too expensive to sustain. The only way forward was a network security automation solution that would: 

• Automate many of the daily change requests across the 50+ firewalls, saving time so that IT and security staffers could work on other critical tasks 
• Eliminate errors in firewall rules 
• Demonstrate the ability to work with Cisco FirePower NGFW in the future 

The company also presented a special challenge in the form of its already-existing deployment of Cisco Bridge Virtual Interface (BVI) devices. The BVIs essentially act as Layer 2 firewalls. Since they, too, store firewall rules, they have to be included in the automation process. 

Solution 

The company brought in three leading Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) solutions to compete in a three-month proof-of-concept contest.  

The combination of AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer (AFA) and AlgoSec FireFlow (AFF) stood above the rest.  

AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer ensures security and compliance by providing visibility and analysis into complex network security policies. 

 AlgoSec FireFlow improves security and saves security staffs’ time by automating the entire security policy change process, eliminating manual errors, and reducing risk. 

Results 

The two AlgoSec products, Firewall Analyzer and FireFlow went into production in mid-2018 where they have been working ever since, with the following results: 

• Usability was outstanding—the products integrate well and are easy to learn and operate 
• Single-pane-of-glass visibility across the network was suddenly available and useful to the network security staff
• The automation demonstrated the ability to slash the time required to push firewall changes and to eliminate errors 

The company found AlgoSec’s Tier 3 support to be impressive. Working directly with Tier 3 personnel and the ever-eager AlgoSec developers, the company’s Senior Technology Architect and other senior security analysts were able to work closely with AlgoSec to solve the BVI conundrum and implement the entire AlgoSec solution.