As a complete IT service provider and SAP system consultant, Fujitsu TDS GmbH, a subsidiary of the Fujitsu Group, offers large and medium-sized companies a wide variety of data center services. Fujitsu delivers IT outsourcing, application management, and SAP consulting services to well-known customers in the automotive, retail, and processing industries as well as banks and insurance companies.
The network security department of Fujitsu is focused on offering the best firewall services, including managing policy changes to open connectivity, optimizing firewall policies to tighten network security, and ensuring policy compliance with internal policies as well as industry standards and regulations. Fujitsu itself is also required to prepare for security audits (such as GxP and specific German entity regulations).
Fujitsu’s Data Centers must ensure compliance with multiple standards and regulations, including Good Manufacturing Practice, GxP (Pharma), Kreditwesengesetz (Financial), BSI IT-Grundschutz, SOX-IT Compliance (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) and ISO-certifications. Between customers and auditing firms Fujitsu must pass several audits every month. Pressing audit requirements for a specific customer in 2009 initially prompted the Fujitsu Network Security team to consider and deploy Tufin.
The Tufin Orchestration Suite’s SecureTrack delivered the required reports to identify and handle firewall policy risks, and the team evaluated and selected the firewall policy management solution over writing and maintaining scripts. With time, the network security team started using additional capabilities of the Tufin Orchestration Suite, like the decommissioning report that provides better understanding of server usage, and the real-time revision control that significantly reduced time and efforts of preparing for the periodic audit. By 2013, the Fujitsu team deployed Tufin SecureTrack across the full environment for internal audit readiness as well as to offer new and improved services to customers. Fujitsu customers not only gain visibility with Tufin’s advanced change reports, but also get more valuable policy optimization services from Fujitsu based on the results of rule usage reports.
Following the adoption of Tufin SecureTrack, the Fujitsu team realized that the insight and analysis of firewall policies across vendors could also be used to simplify and automate manual tasks like server decommissioning and policy changes. Server decommissioning became much easier with Tufin object lookup and usage reports, saving 20% of the time spent on decommissioning and other networking tasks. Planning network security changes with Tufin allowed the team to implement simple changes within five minutes, and more complex changes within 30 minutes to an hour, increasing their capacity to handling 15 changes a day and saving 15% of the time previously spent on each change.
To further increase efficiency for Fujitsu and for end customers, the team then decided to deploy Tufin SecureChange. The end-to-end network security change automation that is based on builtin risk analysis will not only better position Fujitsu to address customer needs, but will also allow them to scale faster to a larger customer base by reducing the complexity of their multi-vendor network. The accurate topology simulation is key for providing faster and better understanding of the Fujitsu network (>100 firewalls), and provisioning changes from a single console will significantly reduce the time it takes today to get people up to speed.
The Fujitsu Network Security team must keep pace with the business and provide services for the company’s expanding global customer base. Tufin Orchestration Suite helps position Fujitsu for the future with a variety of firewall management services, increased efficiency, and a platform that enables scaling. That explains the commitment of the Fujitsu network security team to leverage the Tufin solution. In fact, eight members of the team have already completed in-depth technical training of the Tufin Orchestration Suite and are now Tufin Certified Security Experts (TCSE). Fujtisu customers can select whether or not to purchase the Tufin service for audit readiness and firewall policy monitoring, but all customers gain from the policy optimization, management, and reporting that Tufin provides for Fujitsu firewalls.
“Tufin adds value to our brand. We have end-customers who already know Tufin and request the Orchestration Suite and its reports, which we also use internally to manage the scope of network security change requests handled by our data center. Implementing smaller changes now takes us about five minutes, larger changes about half an hour, depending on the size and complexity of the change. We plan changes with Tufin and it’s much easier to perform server decommissioning according to policy with the policy analyzer.”
Julian Retzbach, Network Administrator, Fujitsu TDS GmbH Network Security Department
Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 156,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.7 trillion yen (US$41 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2016. For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com.
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