Carlsberg is now streamlining and optimising its global IT and network security with a SASE solution from Cato Networks, delivered together with Itavis and tailored to the needs of the brewing giant.
This is a reissue of Version2's article.
Carlsberg's global network connects 200 locations and 25,000 remoto users distributed all over the world. With such size and prevalence, it takes a lot of resources to keep IT security up to date at the highest level. For this reason, Carlsberg has long been looking for a solution that can converge and bring together the many security technologies used by the organization into one common platform for both security and networking.
This is what Tal Arad, CISO and chief technology officer of Carlsberg Group, told US IT news site SDxCentral. According to Tal Arad, the group's locations have so far been connected via legício MPLS services, SD-WAN or site to site-VPN, depending on the region. A mix of local security applications protected individual locations, and users connected to Carlsberg's systems either via traditional VPN, private SD-WAN or application-based access.
The patchwork of solutions gradually became too time-consuming and expensive to maintain, not least due to an increasing focus on IT security and increased technical complexity in general.
Marriage between security and networking
The solution, what Tal Arad describes as a “marriage of security and networking” via a SASE platform from Cato Networks, was delivered via Danish company Itavis, specialists in IT infrastructure and operations. Via a managed cloud platform provides Itavis services to some of the country's leading companies. The company has branches in three different countries and, in addition to operations and infrastructure, also offers consultancy on strategy, project management and IT architecture.
SASE stands for 'Secure Access Service Edge' and refers to an integrated cloud solution that combines network and security features in the cloud. The term was originally defined by analytics firm Gartner and describes the conversion between networks and security as a service, including software-defined WAN, network-firewalling and zero-trust network access. Gartner expects the SASE market to grow 29% annually over the next four years and reach a volume of $25 billion by 2027.
Allan Bendix, CEO of Itavis, helped negotiate the deal with Carlsberg.
“With the solution chosen by Carlsberg, we can move from three regional networks to one global network,”
he explains.
“And you move from a large number of regional network and security vendors with many fragmented technical solutions to one integrated network and security framework from one vendor. In the past, it was difficult to implement updates and see their consequences because they had to be coordinated across the many layers of Carlsberg's old solution. Now you can do it from a central level with complete visibility and overview. This means, among other things, that Carlsberg's IT people will have the opportunity to focus more on long-term planning and much less on firefighting. “
Single Vendor chassis
Cato Networks has developed the world's first SASE platform and continues to be at the forefront of the field. Moreover, their solution is what the professionals call a single vendor-SASE, i.e. that the system and all its network and security components are developed, maintained and controlled by Cato itself and not pieced together by components from many different providers. According to Allan Bendix, this is probably the main reason why Itavis chose Cato Networks.
“It is precisely the total solution that provides the great benefits,”
explains Allan Bendix.
“Cato owns the entire ecosystem, both hardware and software. It makes everything much easier for the customer when you only have one supplier to deal with. “
POPs around the world
As part of its technical set-up, Cato Networks has established a widely branched backbone with POPs distributed throughout the world. The local POPs make it possible to provide network and security services wherever users are. For example, an employee on a business trip in South America automatically connects to the nearest POP and with complete safety instead of the traditional solution: making split tunneling and let all the local traffic be done locally instead of sending it from South America to Copenhagen and back again. The traditional solution involves major security risks.
According to Christian Hougaard, regional sales director at Cato Networks for Denmark and Norway, companies do not need to have Carlsberg's size and global footprint to benefit from a SASE solution that brings together network and security in one technology solution.
“When I see the many cases where companies have been exposed to ransomware, I have to say that, regardless of size, you can reap great benefits by bringing all your security and network together on one platform from one vendor. It provides the overall overview and the short reaction time needed. According to Gartner, this is precisely the strength of SASE and also the reason why it expects great growth in the field. “
DBU in Qatar
Allan Bendix cites as an example one of Itavis' other customers, significantly smaller than Carlsberg, but at least as well known, at least in Denmark: DBU.
“In connection with the World Cup in Qatar, DBU had a delegation in the country. There was a need to secure the participants' computers against eavesdropping. We installed Catos accesso remotaclient on each machine, which established an encrypted tunnel to the nearest Cato Networks pop. Then it was problem solved. “
Would you like to know more about SASE?
Then check out our page on Itavis' SASE Platform right here.
