Headquartered in Parma, Italy, Communication Valley Reply specialises in the design and implementation of security solutions based on new communication channels and digital media. It defines and develops security models for a wide range of industries, including media, financial services, and utilities. With operations across Europe and main offices in Germany, the UK, and Italy, Communication Valley Reply positions as one of the leading managed security service providers (MSSP) in the EU.
Key Requirements
In the IT services industry, the technology you use can be a key differentiator between your company and the competition. Only by combining its expertise and consultancy with the most reputable solutions can a MSSP be confident of attracting and retaining happy customers.
With this in mind, Reply has enjoyed a 12-year security technology collaboration with RSA. With extensive experience and knowledge of RSA’s products, Reply is able to offer innovative technology solutions to its clients, many of which need to tightly control who accesses their data and how that access is tracked. "Security is a top priority for our clients," says Daniele Vitali, security manager at Reply. "We need to offer them a level of security that they can trust. This is why it is so important that we work closely with the industry’s leader in advanced security technology, RSA."
As it serves a significant portion of the Italian financial sector, Reply’s offerings also need to take compliance into account. The company therefore has to not only keep up with the latest technologies from RSA, but also know how to deploy them in the most effective way to meet varied but stringent client service level agreements (SLAs).
As an MSSP, Reply built its own core service-management platform, based on RSA envision security information and event management (SIEM), some years ago. "The platform is designed to administer all security-related processes for clients, like logging incidents and tracking tickets," says Vitali. "However, we need to innovate continuously, so we were interested to see how additional RSA technologies could be used to enhance our offering."
Solution
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Wanting to enhance the way that it managed its client services and processes, Reply deployed three modules of RSA Archer: Enterprise Management, Threat Management, and Incident Management.
"The platform enables us to much more efficiently handle all our contracts and SLA obligations," explains Vitali. "Using some specially tailored on-demand applications built on the Incident Management module, we’ve built a solution that exactly maps to our organizational needs, cutting down on manual administrative tasks that previously ate into our client-facing time."
Using the three modules in tandem, Reply is able to provide a solution that automatically tracks and reports on governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) information and processes for its clients. For example, if a security event that has the potential to escalate into a GRC incident is picked up by Reply’s core service-management platform, an automatic alert is fed into RSA Archer, which flags it to the right person for immediate resolution. This ensures that any potential compliance issues are dealt with quickly, well within clients’ SLA times.
RSA Security Analytics was also implemented to provide Reply with a route to stand-alone management services, including all security monitoring and reporting. The Security Analytics Warehouse helps to manage, analyse, and archive data at a low cost, simultaneously delivering high-quality performance and scalability.
Reply created its own dedicated user interface to enable users to access the new tools and capabilities. "We plan to offer our customers a full service from Reply, which leverages these great RSA solutions as part of it," explains Vitali.
Results
With increased efficiency throughout the security arm of Reply’s business, its security operations centre (SOC) has benefited from a reduction in time spent on process administration. For example, RSA Archer helps to triage security tickets as they come in, prioritising them automatically and deciding which incidents are closer to violating an SLA and should therefore be dealt with most urgently. "This has had a major financial impact on our business as well," says Vitali. "We recently estimated that we had reduced resource costs by 25%, which is fantastic and allowed us to dedicate more people to build innovative services."
Meanwhile, RSA Security Analytics has enabled Reply to improve the quality of its technical analyses. "With more intelligent sources and a reduced need for manual data sifting, we find that we can draw conclusions much more quickly and intuitively," says Vitali.
"This is something we can pass on to our clients by giving them better insights and greater business value from their security data."
The Italian banking sector operates amongst complex compliance issues and regulations, but RSA Security Analytics combines network monitoring, traditional log management, and compliance to meet all requirements, while also making sure Reply’s clients’ SLAs are always met. "Ultimately, we have benefited by being able to offer a more efficient, improved MSSP service that gives us a strong competitive advantage," says Vitali.
Looking to the future, Vitali and his team are considering closer integration between RSA Security Analytics and RSA Archer over time. "We are also looking forward to implementing RSA Transaction Monitoring to pinpoint fraudulent online and mobile activities," he says. RSA Authentication Manager and the RSA Enterprise Compromise Assessment Tool (ECAT) are also on Vitali’s radar. "The technologies are scalable and innovative enough to keep up with an ever-evolving landscape," he concludes.
