SonicWall Improves Cybersecurity Maturity and Communication with Executives with Help of CYE
Industry
Cybersecurity
Employees
3000
Headquarters
United States
Revenue
$480 million
About the Company
SonicWall is a cybersecurity forerunner with more than 30 years of expertise and is recognized as a leading partner-first company. With the ability to build, scale and manage security across the cloud, hybrid and traditional environments in real-time, SonicWall provides seamless protection against the most evasive cyberattacks across endless exposure points for increasingly remote, mobile and cloud-enabled users. With its own threat research center, SonicWall can quickly and economically provide purpose-built security solutions to enable any organization—enterprise, government agencies and SMBs—around the world.
The Challenge: Strengthen Cyber Posture and Manage Resources Better
As a leading cybersecurity company, SonicWall already had a mature cyber posture, yet there was more that could be done to bolster its security measures. Part of the problem was that although the company’s security team met regularly, there was a notable lack of corporate investment in tools and dedicated resources.
John Padilla, SonicWall’s associate VP of IT, realized that the company needed the input of external experts to thoroughly assess its cyber posture and come up with a long-term plan to strengthen it. That was when the team decided to partner with CYE.
“CYE was brought in as a long-term partner to assist us with our security posture.”
John Padilla, Associate VP of IT, SonicWall
The Solution: Hyver Security and Maturity Assessments to Pinpoint Cyber Gaps and Drive Mitigation
CYE needed to evaluate not only SonicWall’s internal security, but also their public-facing applications. After conducting a comprehensive security assessment, CYE detected several critical findings that took the SonicWall team by surprise. These gaps needed to be remediated to prevent lateral movement and isolate systems.
“CYE really helped us hone in on what the priorities were for us, and how we needed to focus on certain areas such as network segmentation and access control,” Padilla said. “This helped us manage our resources and helped us shape our roadmap in planning for long-term strategic initiatives.”
Hyver, CYE’s optimized cyber risk quantification platform, was instrumental in driving SonicWall’s mitigation efforts and creating a reasonable plan.
“Hyver is one of our main tools, and it’s very powerful,” Padilla said. “Everything that’s discovered on the assessment is put into Hyver, which helps us track issues and create action items.”
In addition, Padilla particularly appreciates Hyver’s maturity assessment, which uncovers high severity findings. As a result, Sonicwall’s cybersecurity maturity has improved dramatically over the years.
“Having CYE on the network and always looking for possible ways that our internal network can be exploited is huge for us. That provides more value than anything else.”
John Padilla, Associate VP of IT, SonicWall
The Impact: Enhanced Communication with Stakeholders and Increased Budget
Padilla noted that until recently, there was almost no communication with the executive team about cybersecurity, but Hyver changed all of that.
“Hyver tracks what’s been completed,” Padilla said, “and makes it easy for me to report that upstream.”
He explained that the cost of breach dashboard is extremely effective for presenting to the board and measuring return on investment, as is the focus on NIST. This visibility has made it easier for SonicWall’s team to secure the necessary funding for cybersecurity.
“The investment in CYE’s tools and services has helped us receive the financial support over the past couple of years that we didn’t have several years ago,” said Padilla.
“CYE was there to help and augment our team and provide us with the tools and services we need. They continue to help us improve our posture, tools, and processes. It’s almost like an extension of our team.”
John Padilla, Associate VP of IT, SonicWall