Business Challenge

Our government agency client needed to enhance data security for their 40,000 IT systems across 1,000 sites working in a vSphere environment. The systems needed to comply with the rigorous Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) standards mandated by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

Solution

ClearBridge provided a VMware/Encryption Subject Matter Expert who created an encryption solution to schedule, track, and deploy security. The solution involved:

• Utilization of a BI tool to configure integrations, interface with APIs, and extract custom data – all essential for determining the condition of the environment
• Creation of customized dashboards for a variety of legacy Windows and Linux operating systems that emphasized important updates and required reboots
• Collaboration with a major supplier to develop an engine that leveraged existing IaaS automation technologies and enabled the automation, testing, and deployment of configuration changes
• Management of the continuous cycle of OS version updates, including support and validation of the procedures on three generations of OS’s

​Impact

The solution provided a standardized, repeatable process for automating security, enabling administrators to easily schedule and deploy updates. The government agency is on track to avoid tens of thousands of hours of manual labor, equating to $3 million.

According to our consultant, “The goal was to implement advanced encryption and secure key management across one of the most complex VMWare environments in the US. We ended up automating a significant portion of the work required and turned data security into a business enabler.”

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