Achieving better security is something we all know is necessary but can struggle to get there. It’s like improving your diet: you know you need to eat better and exercise to cultivate a healthier, more well-rounded lifestyle. But you don’t do it because it’s hard, often expensive, and can be a pain. So, you avoid it (trust me, we’ve all been there). But, you learn that putting one foot in front of the other forces you to take small steps toward big results. The same notion applies to needing better security. We know we need it, but it’s not always easy to know where to begin.    

There is no quick fix for sustainable change. Sure, we can make better choices each day, but it takes consistency and a solid structural foundation – a lifestyle change – to maintain these advancements. Losing weight is one thing; when it comes to better multi-cloud security, this is a process that leaves little room for fluctuation. Start with the fundamentals and tighten your belt over time.   

Let’s take a look at real-world organizations that have benefitted from doing the hard stuff. They’ve done the work and have seen the results. They’ve changed their security lifestyle and found a more secure and consistent regimen to ensure a hardened security posture.  

The United States Senate Federal Credit Union  

The financial service industry is one of the trickiest and one of the most important industries to navigate. The United States Senate Federal Credit Union is a financial organization meant to help its members achieve financial success and stability. They currently serve over 40,000 members, some of which are U.S. Supreme Court and Senate officiates. USSFCU manages assets totaling $1 billion, which is both an achievement and a challenge.  

USSFCU faced issues introducing new products and services to help its members evolve online banking needs and requirements. As we all know, we saw a massive shift in remote work in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The credit union had to discover a new way to replace longstanding hardware-based network solutions with a virtual and remote infrastructure.  

VMware was able to assist USSFCU in solving their need for a unified infrastructure. VMware’s network segmentation leveled up their protection via a single platform, from the perimeter to the data center, across networks and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), policy controls to protect apps, services, and more. Mark Fournier, CIO of USSFCU, commended VMware’s ability to simplify ops: “We didn’t have to create some complex networking routing scenario to drive traffic to security. We could bring the security to where the traffic was.” To watch more of what he has to say, view the video below.  

Now that’s a lifestyle security change if we’ve ever seen one.   

Preferred Mutual Insurance Company  

Preferred Mutual Insurance Company provides insurance to more than 232,000 individual and business customers through a network of more than 500 agents across the North-East. For an organization that services the community by protecting their assets, it’s equally as important that Preferred Mutual is protected, too.  

With such a large network, challenges are a given. Preferred Mutual faced challenges with enabling a distributed workforce without increasing security risks. They also aimed to avoid high costs and complexities which tend to come with building out a physical network for PCI-DSS compliance. Speaking of compliance, it was also non-negotiable that they remained up to date with major data security requirements in conjunction with HIPPA laws. So, how’d they tackle these? Hear us out.    

Preferred Mutual enlisted VMware’s NSX and Horizon solutions software to enhance remote work capabilities and productivity while protecting their sensitive data. Using the Service-defined Firewall capability integrated within NSX, they were able to segment the PCI network to meet all security and compliance requirements.   

In the words of Matthew Monahan, Senior Systems Engineer at Preferred Mutual, “NSX makes it easy to operationalize segmentation, enabling us to work at a much faster pace than we could with other products.” We’re proud to have been able to help Preferred Mutual remain at the top while being safe, secure, and efficient.  

For more information on how Preferred Mutual and others like them succeeded in their security overhaul, feel free to download our customer E-book now. 

SKY Italia 

SKY Italia is a part of Europe’s leading entertainment company, which has recently become an extension of Comcast NBC Universal. Even on its own, SKY Italia has a 4.82 million-subscriber base.     

As an international organization, they face not only localized issues but possible security threats on a global scale. They also were tasked with abiding by all international compliance regulations. For SKY Italia, the fundamentals of their operation were challenged as their success rose. Some of their other challenges included providing on-demand streaming capabilities, delivering content from local, remote, and public cloud data centers in a secure environment, and enabling the infrastructure to scale out to a large enough network architecture.  

SKY Italia’s challenges were met with VMware network security solutions. They adopted the VMware Software-Defined Data Center stack, which includes VMware NSX. SKY Italia was able to outline application flows, build out firewalls, and finally had the capabilities to move workloads between environments seamlessly.   

SKY Italia achieved its expansionary vision with the most advanced security rollout there is, and VMware will remain dedicated to its organizational dreams each step of the way.  

A Security Overhaul: How You Can Change, Too   

USSFCU, Preferred Mutal, and SKY Italia have completely changed the way they handle security by partnering with VMware. The hard stuff will never entirely be out of the picture, but it doesn’t mean your organization has to suffer. Be encouraged to take small steps to reach those grandiose goals; they may feel out of reach, but they’re there for the taking with proper action. There is always a way to improve security protection and work toward a better, healthier (in this case, more secure) lifestyle.   

Like these three customer success stories, so many others have joined them in their quest to shed outdated security architecture. To learn the four critical steps toward advanced security protection, download this whitepaper and gain guidance on where to start, where to finish, and everything in between. We know enhanced security is a non-negotiable — allow yourself to slow down, and take it in phases.