Enabling Stronger Security Controls for a Global Life Sciences Organization

Challenge

In 2020 a global life science organization was executing a cyber security risk reduction program across their global manufacturing plant and R&D lab estate.

The organization defined a number of cyber security controls they required, including the ability to provide a 'big red button' around the site to isolate it in the event a serious cyber breach was to occur. 

At the same time, to accelerate the risk reduction by optimizing available change windows, the implementation of this solution would need to have limited impact on the operation of the site. This challenge became the Geo-Segmentation Project.

WWT Professional Services: The partner of choice

After a rigorous selection process, WWT was chosen as the partner of choice to deliver the program. 

WWT's global presence and ability to deploy the necessary hardware and solution to sites throughout the world using our regional integration centers to pre-configure, test and validate for DOA prior to shipping was key. So was our experience of deploying and integrating network and security solutions into the customer's wider architectural ecosystem, and the confidence this had built up within the customer. 

Solution

WWT lived up to its "world wide" name by ramping up the project team for an ambitious global deployment. The scope was to deploy the solution and associated hardware to 77 sites, across 31 countries and 6 continents over a period of 20 months.

To achieve such a global deployment, during a global pandemic, was a challenging situation, but WWT's experience and expertise in global deployments made this achievable. 

A global team was deployed to meet the required scope with resources from across the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Singapore, India and Japan ready to design, configure and install the solution at every site required, in any time zone.  

The project team involved:

• Security Engineers
• Network Engineers
• Project and Program Managers, using WWT's extensive PMO framework
• Cyber Security Consultants
• Partner and WWT Rack & Stack Engineers

Whilst the solution was broadly transferable to each site, each site needed a unique design and implementation and cutover approach. WWT worked closely with the business at each site to ensure the implementation and cutover were done with the minimum of disruption and at a time most beneficial to the customer, always respectful of the customer needs and requirements. 

When required, WWT was able to use its extensive in-country partner network to do the physical rack & stack activities for the hardware and leverage its team of experienced network and security engineers to configure the network and hardware remotely to ensure the solution was in place as required. 

The project team built a close relationship with the customer through regular checkpoints and joint team meetings to build a 'one team' approach. In doing this we were able to ensure a transparent and rigorous assessment of risks, issues and changes that allowed us to ensure any challenges were overcome collaboratively to keep the ambitious project on track.

Results

As the project enters its last couple of months with only a small number of sites left to deploy, this global life sciences organization now has the ability to implement the security controls it requires. The smooth implementation at such a large number of sites without causing any major incidents or issues to the customer network or environment demonstrated WWT's unique, collaborative and experienced approach to global security deployments. 

The below appreciation from our customer really shows the great teamwork and excellence our team at WWT bring to the table:

Next steps to success

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