FORTUNE500 INSURANCE GIANT STREAMLINES ATTACK SURFACE REDUCTION AND INCIDENT RESPONSE response

The Customer

A fortune 500 insurance and financial services company operating in 60 countries sought a solution to control cyber risk across its autonomous business units and subsidiaries. Because of the distributed nature of the business, corporate IT – specifically cyber security teams – lacked visibility and oversight into the company’s internet exposure.

“IONIX found 50% more assets than the competing solution, with minimal false positives. Their ASM solution provided Active Protection and curated lists of assets recommended for removal, which enabled us to minimize threats to our attack surface on-premises, in the cloud, and through SaaS and managed platforms.”

VP Cyber Security
Fortune 500 company

The Challenge

Over the years, the company made multiple acquisitions and was challenged to address the “digital baggage” and cyber risk of each of the acquired companies. Integrating and migrating unknown and unmaintained shadow IT assets without prior knowledge is a complicated process. As a result, internet-facing websites and other services existed on the network that were unknown, owned, or maintained by anyone.

Further, the rapid cloud adoption and digital transformation taking place across the organization continuously expanded the company’s attack surface. Without visibility, the company faced increasing cyber risks.

The company was looking for a way to effectively gain control of cyber risk across the organization and manage the security posture of business units and subsidiaries. It also wanted to reduce the attack surface by decommissioning outdated and unused IT assets.

The Solution

With IONIX Attack Surface Management, the company was able, for the first time, to discover and inventory all internet-facing assets – across business units, subsidiaries, and brands.

IONIX also enabled the company to distinguish between two classes of assets: those that were deployed and operated within the organization’s own data centers and cloud accounts and those assets that were operated by third-party vendors on external accounts. Since different teams manage these assets, their classification was crucial for streamlining everyday operations.

IONIX also provides the company with decommissioning candidates to facilitate attack surface reduction. As part of the risk assessment, IONIX continually identifies exploitable assets and domains that are vulnerable to hijacking. Specific assessments are performed on each asset by type to enumerate vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and other security issues.

The Outcomes

With IONIX’s decommissioning recommendations, the company has been able to offset their attack surface expansion – and achieve an annual attack surface reduction.

The company’s security team have full visibility of their attack surface assets and digital supply chain – based on assement across 13 asset categories. Over the past two years, IONIX has automatically applied Active Protection to over 40 assets, proactively preventing attacks.

Working in partnership with IONIX’s customer success team, the company has consistently improved its security posture across subsidiaries, and effectively faced emerging threats while reducing mean time to resolution by 92%.