European Telecom Company Expands Its Footprint to Better Protect Users and Customers

Hyper-growth and a determination to stand above the crowd compelled a popular Eastern European telecom to upgrade its trusty McAfee Enterprise security infrastructure, which they relied on for many years to protect their 8,000 corporate endpoints. Competitive pressure to keep costs low and cybercriminals at bay for both their internal users and their customers spurred the mobile and fixed telephony company to enhance their existing security architecture with the latest endpoint and cloud-based protections from McAfee Enterprise.

The integrated McAfee Enterprise approach—with ePolicy Orchestrator ( ePO™) at the helm as the single-pane-of-glass management hub—enabled the security architect to build out a strong security foundation, with McAfee Enterprise endpoint and data protection solutions and Microsoft Defender as the mainstays of the telecom’s line of defense.

With ransomware and other advanced threats grabbing headlines, the telecom company felt a pressing need to upgrade its McAfee Enterprise infrastructure and expand its on-premises endpoint protection to cloud-based McAfee Enterprise Endpoint Security. The organization also added MVISION™ Endpoint Threat Detection and Response (MVISION® EDR) and deployed two McAfee Enterprise Advanced Threat Defense appliances for dynamic and static sandboxing. These deployments were easily integrated into the telecom’s existing security architecture—with all solutions managed by McAfee Enterprise ePO software. 

Faster time to detection, investigation, and remediation

McAfee Enterprise Endpoint Security was instrumental in both simplifying and boosting endpoint protection, as multiple technologies—Threat Protection, Firewall, Web Control, and Adaptive Threat Prevention—are consolidated into a single agent. Leveraging threat data from local endpoints and McAfee Enterprise Global Threat Intelligence in the cloud, the telecom’s security team is also empowered to detect zero-day threats in near real time. When a threat is identified on a given endpoint, that information is automatically shared with all the other endpoints. And when an unknown or suspicious file is detected, it is immediately quarantined for analysis by MVISION EDR or the McAfee Endpoint Advanced Threat Defense sandbox.

Investigation had once been a lengthy and laborious manual process, often taking days or weeks. Sometimes detections of malicious activity were even ignored due to time constraints. But, after implementing MVISION EDR, things changed dramatically. Investigations and remediations now take as little as 10 to 15 minutes. The security team is catching more threats than ever before, their workflows are streamlined, and investigations are faster. Best of all, thanks to MVISION EDR, team members have expanded their threat-hunting capacity—without augmenting their staff.

Alerts coordinate with action

Because McAfee Enterprise Advanced Threat Defense appliances and MVISION EDR are integrated with McAfee Enterprise SIEM solutions and McAfee Enterprise ePO software, suspicious activity at an endpoint automatically triggers an investigation. Advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in MVISION enable administrators to understand the alert, sort out the facts, and remediate any threat. MVISION EDR does all the preparatory work, gathering and distilling relevant data, such as IP addresses and information about devices and users. Graphic visualizations and AI-guided investigations help analysts quickly get a grasp on what’s happening. The security team can also run real-time queries to see if something similar has occurred anywhere else, and they can conduct historical searches for greater context.

“The volume of malware we have to deal with has definitely shrunk since implementing McAfee Enterprise Endpoint Security. But the addition of MVISION EDR has made an even bigger impact on security posture. When our endpoints do encounter malware, we can now respond many times faster and more effectively than ever before,” points out the security architect.

Achieving a proactive stance

The enhanced McAfee Enterprise security architecture has transformed the telecom company’s approach to maintaining a more resilient security posture. The company is now taking a more proactive defense as a result of the new, fully coordinated McAfee Enterprise toolset.

In addition to advanced threat-hunting capabilities, the ability to share threat information across the organization via the Data Exchange Layer (DXL) has also contributed to a more proactive stance. For example, whenever a malicious file is identified, that information is automatically added to the McAfee Enterprise Threat Intelligence Exchange threat reputation database and shared with all DXL-connected systems: endpoints, SIEM, Advanced Threat Defense sandboxes, MVISION EDR software, and even the company’s Cisco pxGrid infrastructure, a multivendor, cross-platform network system that pulls together different parts of an IT infrastructure.

The European telecom company has plans to migrate to the cloud, beginning with Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure. For the time being, the organization plans to keep the McAfee Enterprise ePO management console on premises, but, in the very near future, the plan is to protect internet-only users with cloud-based MVISION ePO™.

“Taking measured steps to augment our security infrastructure has helped us succeed at keeping our company and customers secure,” say the security architect. “It’s nice to know that McAfee Enterprise can support us wherever we are in our journey and can extend our integrated security infrastructure from device to cloud when we’re ready.”