Posted by Mumbai: IIFL has deployed Palo Alto Networks’ Strata network security suite to secure its virtual environment. IIFL Finance is a major financial services company, covering multiple markets, including wealth management, home loans, microfinance, and retail banking.
With over 2,000 branches in more than 500 cities across India, IIFL wanted their teams to be able to work from anywhere, at any time securely. Given the nature of the business, the group sits deals with huge volumes of sensitive personal and financial data.
And to protect its corporate reputation in the eyes of regulators and customers, the company must effectively manage security threats and that remains a major challenge.
This is where Palo Alto Networks‘ Strata network security suite became a major contender to provide security to IIFL’s virtual environment.
IIFL conducted proofs of concept (PoCs) against agreed-upon criteria with several vendors. In addition to a PoC, Palo Alto Networks undertook a Security Lifecycle Review (SLR).
SLR is a unique assessment offering that highlights vulnerabilities within an organization’s existing setup. The SLR identified high high-risk applications, susceptibilities, and how the network might cope if traffic were to increase sharply.
“The SLR resonated with IIFL’s desire to find a long-term solution to risk applications, susceptibilities, and how the network might cope if traffic were to increase sharply,” said A Shiju Rawther, EVP – Technology, IIFL.
“The PoC showed Palo Alto Networks to be way ahead of the others. Its features and functionality suited to our growth strategy. It was clear Palo Alto Networks would give us scale and visibility,” added Rawther.
The deployment has helped IIFL in:
- Establishing end-to-end threat visibility, from the cloud to on-premises to devices
- Providing complete protection of applications and workloads in physical data centers, across LAN perimeters, and in multiple public clouds
- Increasing cloud native application visibility and control
- Ensuring scale to accommodate business growth
“Security is one of the pillars of our digital transformation. It can accelerate business growth and provide strength at our core. We value Palo Alto Networks for its features, its support, and its vision,” commented Rawther.
Further, IIFL is exploring the Palo Alto Network’s Cortex security operations suite with a view toward faster investigations, fewer alerts and automation. It is a part of the company’s “security transformation” plan initiated in 2018.
“The cybersecurity challenges – handling multiple clients and managing thousands of employees working remotely – that a large financial services company like IIFL face on a daily basis is immense. This has become even more critical in the wake of the current Covid-19 pandemic,” said Anil Bhasin, Regional VP – India & SAARC, Palo Alto Networks.
“We are honoured that IIFL has chosen Palo Alto Networks to help evolve their IT environment to better support remote access solutions. We are confident that the dynamic nature of our platform will provide a secure environment for IIFL to safely access remote work capabilities now and in the future,” added Bhasin.