Forcepoint > Case Studies > At This Cutting-Edge Automotive Parts Supplier, Intellectual Property Protection Has Kicked into High Gear

At This Cutting-Edge Automotive Parts Supplier, Intellectual Property Protection Has Kicked into High Gear

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Europe

Country

Austria

Product

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention

Tech Stack

Data Loss Prevention

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Brand Awareness
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Database Security

Applicable Industries

Automotive

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing
Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Cybersecurity

Services

Cybersecurity Services
Data Science Services

About The Customer

The customer is a leading supplier of cables and wires across several sectors, including automotive, industry, and elevators. The company has more than 2,000 employees in eight countries. It is headquartered in Austria. The company is a trusted partner to high-profile clients, with whom it collaborates on highly valuable proprietary schematics and development plans. The company operates on a global scale, with sensitive, proprietary data frequently on the move. As the company expanded into countries with a known high risk of IP theft and corporate espionage, it wanted to ensure proprietary data was locked down.

The Challenge

The company, a leading supplier of cables and wires across several sectors, including automotive, industry, and elevators, was facing the challenge of protecting its valuable IP and that of its high-profile clients across its corporate and international locations. The company needed visibility to risky activity, indicating corporate espionage. With collaboration on a global scale, this sensitive, proprietary data is frequently on the move. Realizing data in motion can be difficult to see and control, the company needed a better way to secure it. And as the company expanded into countries with a known high risk of IP theft and corporate espionage, it wanted to ensure proprietary data was locked down. The breach of just one client’s IP could mean the loss of every clients’ trust—hurting the company’s reputation and its bottom line.

The Solution

To meet these challenges, the supplier explored several data loss prevention solutions. However, only Forcepoint’s solution was able to meet the requirements the company deemed necessary to catch risky users in action and stop corporate espionage. In particular, Forcepoint demonstrated its data loss prevention solution could be tuned specifically to discover data types such as source code, engineering drawings, merger and acquisition documents, sensitive trade secrets, and other data the company identified as “crown jewels.” To address the risks of international expansion, Forcepoint’s solution provides encryption for data as it moves outside the organization and across more than 80 countries. For example, with Forcepoint’s centralized policy management, the company is able to increase international control by applying customized policies from a single console, even to distributed locations.

Operational Impact

DLP policies customized for the company’s data protection and compliance needs, constantly fine-tuned in response to organizational policy changes.
Ability to apply different policies to different locations, all from a single console.
Reduced data movement with educational pop-ups that educate users on good data hygiene—thereby reducing risk.