Identifying how many servers and systems were affected by Heartbleed and other OpenSSL vulnerabilities without having to scan every server manually. PNM Resources needed a way to quickly and accurately identify vulnerabilities across their extensive network of servers and systems. The manual process of scanning each server individually was time-consuming and inefficient, especially during critical incidents like Heartbleed. The challenge was to find a solution that could provide rapid, accurate, and comprehensive visibility into the security status of their assets, enabling timely remediation and risk reduction.

PNRHA needed to enhance its security posture to comply with Saskatchewan’s Health Information Protection Act (HIPA) and prepare for a province-wide security push. The organization lacked visibility into its security status and had no reporting or charting capabilities to demonstrate compliance. With over 100 servers, 2,500 employees, 1,500 desktops, and two major data centers, PNRHA faced significant challenges in managing and securing its extensive IT infrastructure. The security team, led by Senior Security Analyst Jarvis Meier, needed a solution that could scale with the organization’s growth and provide comprehensive security management.

Most security professionals are strapped for time. In the world of independent consultants, time is even more precious, as their clients prefer engagements to be brief while still yielding business value. Just ask Kevin Beaver, an independent information security consultant with more than 25 years of experience in IT. As the founder of Atlanta-based Principle Logic, LLC, Kevin specializes in performing independent information security assessments for Fortune 1000 companies, nonprofits, and government agencies, among others. For the better part of Kevin’s career, his focus has been on security. “When I graduated high school, computers were the next big thing,” he laughs. “I remember when the concept of people accessing your network first started getting attention.” Fast forward a few years, and he’s now the author of Hacking for Dummies – one of the best-selling books on information security testing that’s currently in its fourth edition.

As Stein Mart extended its IT infrastructure, it developed a security framework to protect it. But it lacked a comprehensive system for scanning and analyzing its security posture. The IT security team initially experimented with freeware that gathered and consolidated security data. However, the biggest problem was taking all the consolidated data and doing something with it. Stein Mart needed a better way to analyze the data, so that they could understand the risks and vulnerabilities in their current security posture and remediate them. Along with Security Audit Analyst Ambar Batista, Beckworth determined that Stein Mart needed an easy-to-use vulnerability and analysis solution with capabilities such as scanning, consolidating, and analyzing data across a multivendor, multiplatform IT infrastructure, scheduling scans on a regular basis, creating comprehensive reports that rank specific risks and vulnerabilities by criticality, suggesting remediation steps, interacting with an existing third-party trouble-ticketing system, and supporting remote scanning at every store.

University of Mary Washington needed to prove their compliance with PCI DSS and state security requirements. The IT department needed to help safeguard its extensive computing infrastructure.

Weill Cornell Medical College, located separate from the main university campus, serves as an academic medical center requiring HIPAA compliance. They have complex IT security needs and needed a solution to prioritize and protect from threats as well as grow with the college.

WildTangent, an online games service company, faced significant security challenges due to its bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy. The company had a highly mobile and geographically dispersed workforce, which necessitated the use of personal mobile devices for work purposes. While this approach increased productivity and employee satisfaction, it also introduced security risks. The initial mobile device management (MDM) solution implemented by WildTangent was difficult to configure, had a non-intuitive user interface, and required frequent manual updates. Additionally, not all features were available on every mobile platform, making it an inefficient solution for the company's needs.

Acosta has a highly mobile, geographically distributed workforce. They needed an efficient way to gain actionable insight into user behavior, effectively identify when a user’s account may have been compromised, and shorten the time needed for investigation of security incidents. The company’s large remote workforce and high degree of travel create a complex security environment, necessitating vigilant detection of compromised credentials and unusual user behavior. The challenge is further compounded by the need to manage user risk in a distributed work environment where employees frequently perform in-store marketing evaluations using mobile devices.

As a Managed Security Service Provider, S3 needs to offer clients a security portfolio with the best tools and provide great value, all while maintaining a trusting relationship with the vendor. With attackers becoming more sophisticated, IT environments growing increasingly complex, and a shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals, it’s no wonder that businesses are increasingly turning to Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) to ensure their security program stays current with industry best practices. The MSSP relationship offers a cost-efficient way to mitigate risk, combat threats, and keep pace with compliance regulations.

In a non-profit organization, cost-effectiveness is essential. The USNA Alumni Association & Foundation needed to build a security architecture to protect personal information of alumni. Ken Kurz, the Director of Information Services, faced the challenge of managing an infrastructure that supports 70,000 living alumni without leveraging government resources. The primary concern was to ensure the security of personal information while operating within the constraints of a non-profit budget. Ken's extensive background in information assurance and high-level security engineering made him well-suited for the task, but the challenge remained significant due to the unique constraints of the non-profit sector.

Carnegie Mellon University needed a vulnerability management solution that would scan its assets broadly and offer centralized control for close monitoring and analysis of security threats, as well as the ability to create and export customized reports.

When Eric Nooden joined Redflex as Information Security Specialist, he found many out-of-date server operating systems. Because system stability was a priority with Redflex proprietary solutions, no one wanted to risk outages. The systems administrators were nervous about patching servers, fearing they might break them. The Redflex team had multilayer security in place, with firewalls, anti-virus software, and other technologies, but no dedicated security personnel to manage them. The undermanaged security posture was more reactive than proactive, and Nooden joined Redflex to change that. Additionally, because Redflex passes financial transactions to processing institutions, its systems must pass SAS 70 audits and comply with data protection standards such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) to avoid fines.

Shackerah, the primary user of Rapid7 Nexpose at the American Chemical Society (ACS), faced challenges in ensuring security holes were quickly plugged and handling PCI DSS compliance requirements. Initially using Qualys, the ACS team sought a new solution due to dissatisfaction with customer service. They needed a vulnerability management solution with robust reporting features, comprehensive vulnerability coverage, and excellent customer support.

Søren Hansen, the IT Security Manager at Chr. Hansen, faced significant challenges in gaining visibility into user activities on the network and detecting intrusions. The company needed a solution that could alert them to suspicious network activity and streamline incident investigations. The primary challenge was to find a tool that could provide detailed insights into anomalous behavior, such as stolen credentials and lateral movement, without overwhelming the team with excessive alerts. Additionally, the solution needed to be easy to deploy and manage, without requiring additional agents on endpoints.

When Microsoft undertook an extensive evaluation of Web Application Vulnerability scanning solutions on the market, the company’s Cloud and Enterprise Security Services team knew it would be no small task. Microsoft wanted to build a world-class, scalable Web App Vulnerability scanning service that would serve all of their different service teams in building secure applications. With the technology landscape rapidly evolving, Microsoft foresaw that the homegrown solution it had previously relied upon for application security would soon struggle to keep pace with modern applications with rich, dynamic clients and numerous APIs on the back-end. So the team undertook an extensive, thorough evaluation that spanned several months and settled on AppSpider as one of its Web App Vulnerability Scanners, based in large part on the product’s roadmap towards being able to handle complex application ecosystems that have rich clients and RESTful APIs.

The University of Salzburg faced the challenge of ensuring optimal performance and minimizing risk across its campus networks. With approximately 18,000 students and 3,000 staff across 30 locations, the university needed a robust solution to manage its IT and security infrastructure. The IT and security teams needed to collaborate effectively to prioritize and remediate issues based on the organization's needs. The university required a solution that could provide actionable insights, higher accuracy in identifying vulnerabilities, and better visibility into risk.

In a large university like Virginia Tech, IT security is a major issue. The Office of IT Security conducted a self-assessment of their compliance with the PCI standards and found they needed a commercial scanner with capabilities beyond Nessus.

Wiltshire Council, a unitary council established in 2009, faced the challenge of managing and protecting the personal information of its residents. With over 5,000 employees and more than 350 diverse services, the council needed an efficient and effective IT service to support, maintain, and provide strategic advice. Annual penetration tests were part of the compliance mandates, and the council needed a solution that could run pen tests all year round. Additionally, the council required a vulnerability management solution that could provide detailed and actionable reporting to help remediate risks in the environment.

Russ Verbofsky, the Chief Information Officer at the State of New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, faced significant challenges when he joined the organization. The department's technology infrastructure was outdated, and he had to replace almost every piece of hardware, including switches, routers, firewalls, and servers. With a small IT team of 14 people, half of whom were on the help desk and the other half in application development and database administration, Russ had to support nearly 300 employees across the state. A quarter of these employees worked in the field and connected to the network via VPN, adding complexity to the task. Additionally, the department needed to securely manage its web application for selling hunting and fishing licenses, which accounted for two-thirds of its budget. Another critical requirement was achieving PCI compliance, as credit card information had never been processed through the PCI perspective before. This compliance needed to be achieved across 36 different state agencies.

MCSI wanted to test the ability of their back end, role-based access controls to curb attempts to elevate privileges. They needed an official way to inform clients and regulators on the security and integrity of their systems, while also satisfying HIPAA standards with a third-party evaluation.

The cyberattack came in early 2016, when IT manager Tom Brown was on a trip to eastern Europe. Back at headquarters, his staff reported that email had gone into meltdown. Customers were calling in to report that they received emails from Liberty Wines with an unusual attachment, which turned out to be malicious. At the same time, the team was being bombarded by a backscatter of hundreds of thousands of non-delivery receipts related to the malicious email. Tom had to ensure that this wasn’t from an internal breach — that’s when Brown called in the experts at Rapid7. Brown had used Rapid7 software in the past and knew of them as a leader in the security space. He had previously identified a need to track and analyze user authentications and behavior but couldn’t find anything suitable. Until Rapid7 there really wasn’t anything on the market that could easily scale from an SME like Liberty Wines right up to a large enterprise deployment. The architecture of the InsightIDR system allows it to fit any size, both from a scale and a startup cost perspective. He’d arranged for a live demo, been impressed, and allocated budget to install it the next financial year. However, the attackers had other plans.

One of Benjamin Nawrath’s biggest challenges is maintaining compliance with Germany’s IT Security Act (ITSG), which became law in 2015 but applies from July 2017 onward. The law requires all critical infrastructure providers to run an advanced cybersecurity program designed to ensure the availability, integrity, authenticity, and confidentiality of their IT infrastructure. It also demands that organizations regularly provide certification proving their compliance. Failure to do so could result in a fine of hundreds of thousands Euro. With a large and complex environment to monitor (including 2,000 IP addresses), limited IT staff resources, a growing compliance burden, and ever-determined hackers to keep at bay, Benjamin Nawrath needed robust technology solutions to help overcome these major challenges.

The University of Palermo faced significant challenges in managing and securing a vast number of assets with a small IT team. They needed a solution that could provide comprehensive visibility into vulnerabilities and overall risk, as well as streamline the process of querying and analyzing log data. The university also required a secure method for log retention to meet compliance requirements and sought flexible visibility across a range of operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Windows phones. Prior to adopting Rapid7's solutions, the university relied on Snort and AlienVault OSSIM for incident detection and response, which proved to be less efficient and intuitive.

Sierra View Medical Center faced significant challenges in maintaining real-time visibility and control over its endpoints and servers. The healthcare industry, being a prime target for cyberattacks, required robust security measures to protect sensitive patient data. However, the existing system at Sierra View relied on outdated data from quarterly and biannual scans, which were up to six months old. This outdated information made it difficult to prioritize and assign remediation tasks effectively. The lack of granularity in the CVSS scores further complicated the process, making it nearly impossible to manage vulnerabilities efficiently. As the sole full-time information security practitioner, Scott Cheney needed a more streamlined and automated approach to share risk insights with the IT operations, networks, and systems staff.

Financial institutions around the world have always been an attractive target for hackers keen to get their hands on sensitive customer data, launch online extortion attacks, and interfere in internal business processes to siphon away funds. Even in the United Kingdom, one of the most mature global financial services markets, breaches reported to the regulator soared by 480% in 2018 according to RPC. As part of its customer offerings, Resimac issues a credit card, which means that it is also bound by strict PCI compliance rules. This puts extra pressure on an in-house security team already tasked with keeping escalating threats at bay. With just a handful of staff, Mihalek and his team manage a footprint of approximately 600 assets for the 300+ employees across Australia, New Zealand, and Manila. Needing extra help to support its PCI compliance program—and drive best practices to improve security across the organization—Mihalek sought the help of an outside managed security services provider back in 2017. The decision was underlined by a security incident the firm suffered, an incident Smith claims would have been picked up by a managed security service if one had been in place. But there were also good financial reasons for outsourcing security, says Mihalek.

Chad Kliewer, the Information Security Officer at Pioneer Telephone, was tasked with implementing a comprehensive security plan and ensuring compliance standards across multiple departments, including corporate, telephone, and broadband services. The challenge was compounded by the absence of a centralized IT group, making it difficult to create a cohesive infrastructure. Additionally, there was no formalized scanning process in place, leading to a lack of visibility into the network assets and vulnerabilities.

The University of Texas at Dallas faced significant challenges in managing vulnerabilities across its campus network. The primary goal was to reduce vulnerabilities, detect and investigate security incidents faster, and manage threat exposure effectively. The security team needed a solution that could provide comprehensive visibility into information security risks, correlate user behavior with events, and improve incident response times. Additionally, they wanted to ensure that new technology purchases underwent thorough security assessments before going into production.

Auden Group, a socially responsible financial services company, was looking to expand its product portfolio while ensuring robust cybersecurity. The company's leadership recognized the importance of cybersecurity for the success of its mission and growth. They brought on a six-person security team, led by Philip Wright, Head of InfoSec, to manage all aspects of cybersecurity from prevention to threat response. Wright was particularly concerned about phishing and human error, and wanted to build a program around the NIST cybersecurity framework: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. With only a month until the company’s first product launch, Wright’s priority was obtaining the ability to detect suspicious activity. He turned to InsightIDR - Rapid7’s easy to deploy SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) solution that features built-in threat detection.

Bioventus, a global leader in active healing and surgical orthobiologics, faced significant security challenges due to its large distributed workforce, multiple clouds, diverse devices, and the critical nature of patient data. The company's security team had to deal with user compromise and phishing emails on a daily basis. As an international healthcare company based in the US, Bioventus had the additional challenge of safeguarding patient records. A breach of any sort could be damaging, but a breach of patient records could be particularly expensive. The company also faced common security challenges for enterprises of its size, such as attacks on its cloud-based networks.

Brooks, a rapidly growing sports equipment company, faced increasing security vulnerabilities due to its expansion. The company's growth from $500 million to $1 billion in sales, along with an increase in employees to 1,800, led to more hits on their website, more partners, and consequently, more security events, phishing emails, and potential risks. Despite having a security team of three analysts, the company struggled to stay ahead of the alerts. The traditionally manual, time-intensive incident response and vulnerability management processes were not scalable to meet the growing security challenges.