COVER STORY
an opportunity to consolidate on Palo Alto Networks .
Friedrich ( Fritz ) Wetschnig , CISO and Vice President of Enterprise IT at Flex , said : “ Primarily , we wanted to use the next-generation firewall capabilities that Palo Alto Networks provides , like content-level identification , because it was necessary for us to get more granular control on our network . The second thing was we saw an opportunity to consolidate from three vendors to one by taking advantage of Palo Alto Networks ’ platform approach to cybersecurity .”
Microsegmentation provides foundation for Zero Trust
Flex brought in local trusted network and security partner , Armature Systems , to assist with the initial deployment of the Palo Alto Networks platform and migration from the legacy solutions . As a Diamond Innovator partner with Palo Alto Networks , Armature also had the depth of expertise to then leverage the capabilities of the platform to support Flex ’ s microsegmentation requirements . This was central to securing internal
While Flex may not be a household name , the company manufactures many of the brand-name products recognised around the world .
cross-network traffic and isolating network resources associated with each of the customers whose products Flex is manufacturing .
Wetschnig said : “ Microsegmentation is important if you want to prevent attackers from lateral movement across the network . It ’ s the basis for our Zero Trust strategy . Our goal is to make it so whenever people need to access resources , they can only access them based on certain conditions and with context to know it ’ s legitimate at that point in time .”
Modernising remote access turned critical when COVID-19 hit
Having embraced the Palo Alto Networks platform approach to cybersecurity , Flex also worked with Armature to modernise remote access for the company ’ s global operations . Historically , Flex relied on a traditional hardware-based VPN solution to connect users in its worldwide locations to regional data centres and out to cloud resources and SaaS applications . With growing network traffic pushing the capacity limits of the VPN appliances , Armature recommended the cloud-based Prisma Access Secure Access Service Edge ( SASE ) solution for more efficient direct access to the cloud and data centres , with virtually infinite scalability .
The plan had been to rollout Prisma Access after Flex closed its books for the end of the fiscal year at the end of March 2020 . However , with news that the COVID-19 pandemic would likely force shutdowns around the world , the company shifted gears to expedite the rollout .
Gus Shahin , Flex ’ s Chief Information Officer , said : “ When we saw the Chinese
52 www . intelligentciso . com