Brazil is estimated to be one of the most cyberattacked countries in Latin America, with some research suggesting the country suffers as much as 50% of all attacks in the region.1 Little wonder then that one of the country’s leading businesses, Autoglass/Maxpar, has made cybersecurity a top priority.

Autoglass/Maxpar is a group of businesses providing automotive management and insurance services, as well as spare part replacement and repair of products such as windscreens, headlights, window film and windshield wiper blades for passenger, cargo and armored vehicles. It has 4,000 employees working across all of Brazil and in parts of Colombia.

The Challenge Was Visibility and Traceability

“For a company like Autoglass/Maxpar, security is a major concern,” said Fabiano Moura, IT executive manager, at Autoglass/Maxpar. “But our existing systems did not give us the information we needed fast enough or in a proactive way. We had to search through logs and make correlations, and we did not have time or resources for this process. The challenge was visibility and traceability within our environment; for instance, tracking strange behavior and finding out where and how incidents start.”

Autoglass/Maxpar brought in an external security consultancy to analyze and identify the type of attacks that led to incidents like ransomware and how the business could mitigate them. However, it showed that existing security tools and policies for server and endpoint protection were insufficient, especially as cyberattacks were getting more frequent and sophisticated. This initiated a search for a new solution and led Autoglass/Maxpar to carry out proofs-of-concept of several solutions including CrowdStrike.

“What caught our attention about CrowdStrike was agility,” said Moura. “CrowdStrike was quick to install and easy to use, and feedback from staff was super positive. Most importantly, the product showed it could solve one of our main challenges: visibility of the technological environment.”

Luíz Pinon, IT coordinator at Autoglass/Maxpar, said that simplicity and efficiency of the upgrade was another key reason for choosing CrowdStrike. “Something we always see in the market whenever a new version of a product comes out is update complexity,” he explained. “But with CrowdStrike, everything is transparent for the user across endpoints. For the servers, this was even more important. Before CrowdStrike, every time we needed to do an update on an application like a security tool, we had to shut down the server, run the update, then restart the server.”

Pinon said that another important benefit of CrowdStrike and a reason why it was selected is its integration with other security solutions such as firewalls and anti-spam.

CrowdStrike Strengthens the Security Posture

Autoglass/Maxpar has deployed a number of CrowdStrike Falcon® platform modules to help strengthen the company’s security posture and improve issues such as visibility, ease of use and management. For example, the Falcon platform took less than a month to install and protect 3,500 endpoints.

Autoglass/Maxpar also uses CrowdStrike services to support its security operation. Every month, the company meets with CrowdStrike for an analysis of its current status, suggested best practices and information on updates and new products.

“Once we complete the purchase of a new product or solution, one concern is the relationship,” said Moura. “There is no point having the best tool if there is no follow-up support to use it to best effect. But we do not want a customer/supplier setup, we want a partnership that is built on a solid foundation of trust and is in for the long haul. Very quickly, it was evident that CrowdStrike was committed to adding value to Autoglass/Maxpar by understanding our pain, getting to know us and helping us be more efficient. The close proximity between CrowdStrike and our team is fundamental and is a great differentiator.”

Driving Up Business Productivity and Efficiency

CrowdStrike has delivered several business productivity, efficiency and ease-of-use benefits for Autoglass/Maxpar. One area of concern for Moura is how operational products and services impact daily business functions or impede users’ jobs. “One thing that is really cool about CrowdStrike is the impact on operations,” he said. “When we deployed CrowdStrike, we were delighted and so were users, because nothing changed. The solution does not cause any performance degradation; so much so that no one noticed we had deployed a new security solution.”

This was especially important for the data center team managing over 500 servers. The team no longer needs to reboot servers every time there is an update to the Falcon platform, because updates are automatically processed online. This has saved Autoglass/Maxpar many hours managing and maintaining the data center environment.

CrowdStrike has addressed one of the main challenges that Autoglass/Maxpar was facing. “CrowdStrike has made our security processes and operation much more efficient,” Moura said. “I was facing the prospect of needing more resources to ensure visibility of the environment. CrowdStrike and the way it automates processes and provides a single console has eliminated that need and still improves visibility across the entire environment.”

Better visibility has been key to improving and developing a strategic approach to security management. CrowdStrike provides Moura and his team with a clear and accurate picture of the number and type of vulnerabilities and threats facing the business. Armed with this information, Autoglass/Maxpar can map out its future security strategy. For example, the company is now looking at additional CrowdStrike solutions such as Falcon Identity Threat Protection to help minimize the threat of ransomware attacks in the future.

¹ Source: Fortinet