How Finance Companies Bank on Tripwire ExpertOps

However, most breaches are entirely preventable. Your security team can drastically reduce your attack surface and stay audit-ready by implementing fundamental security controls like security configuration management (SCM), file integrity monitoring (FIM), and vulnerability management (VM). All three of these core processes can be managed on your behalf with Tripwire® ExpertOpsSM so that your team can use their expertise to help run the business instead of managing the security tools.

Four Tripwire ExpertOps Use Cases for Finance

Tripwire ExpertOps automates the essential processes finance entities rely on, including expert-provided configuration hardening recommendations and audit evidence. With the largest library of supported policies and platforms and coverage for an array of OS versions and devices, there are myriad use cases large financial institutions can find in Tripwire ExpertOps.

Here are four of the most common ways Tripwire ExpertOps helps financial customers.

1. Bolstering small security teams

Choosing managed services is an efficient way to quickly relieve overburdened security staff. Stretched security teams are common due to the cybersecurity skills gap. Tripwire’s 2020 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report found that larger organizations, which one might assume have more resources, are experiencing a strain on their cybersecurity team even more acutely than smaller organizations. Ninety-four percent of surveyed organizations said they would benefit from outside help with security processes like VM and SCM

The maintenance work of keeping consoles up and running day to day can exhaust security teams’ time, keeping them from taking on other important tasks. Even with highly mature security teams in place, the demand for talent creates an ongoing vacuum for change as there always remains a need to train administrative staff.

When security experts leverage their expertise running your security solution, your team no longer needs to spend long hours training up or sifting through data to determine which actions to take. Instead, they can focus on more advanced practices like threat hunting, endpoint detection and response (EDR), and penetration testing.

Tripwire ExpertOps is the perfect fit for organizations that want to offload the work of console maintenance to a trusted Tripwire Managed Service Engineer (MSE). It provides stretched security teams with continuous staffing to operate and manage your Tripwire solution at peak efficiency. Your security team can perform at a much higher capacity thanks to ongoing support, guidance, and customized reporting that adapts to meet continuous objectives.

2. Securing network device configuration

Financial organizations have to take a particularly judicious approach when it comes to securing the configurations of their network devices. It’s not uncommon for large enterprises to have individual solutions and tools for each type of endpoint on their systems.

Managing multiple databases and operating systems with various tools only complicates system hardening and attack surface reduction. If your security team currently uses solutions that only work with one type of endpoint, it may be time to consider the consolidation advantage of a managed solution. Tripwire ExpertOps, with its broad platform coverage, eliminates the need to deploy multiple tools for different endpoints

Vendor and tool consolidation is another reason outsourced managed services are becoming increasingly useful in sizable organizations. In many cases, Tripwire ExpertOps is a more cost-effective option than implementing a new tool or vendor for different types of assets and environments—including both on-premise and in the cloud.

Organizations with broad network infrastructures require continuous monitoring for unexpected changes from a known and secure system baseline. Devices like routers, firewalls, switches, servers, load-balancers, and intrusion detection systems all require consistent management. Tripwire ExpertOps will not only keep you from needing to switch between tools to conduct this management, but also place the day to day management in the hands of a dedicated MSE.

3. Automating reconciliation workflows

Audit fatigue is all too common among financial institutions as well, with audit preparation and response eating up a substantial amount of security teams’ time. Much of the painstaking and time-consuming work required to pass an audit comes down to change reconciliation.

The sheer volume of change occurring on enterprise-scale systems calls for automated reconciliation. Automation can greatly reduce the number of changes that need to be singled out for manual review. This means your staff will have more time to focus on those particular changes that can’t be automated—drilling down into the biggest potential threats and letting an advanced tool automatically reconcile changes that don’t merit a closer examination.

Automation not only aids in the more strategic use of security teams’ time. It also helps create a detailed audit trail. Tripwire ExpertOps allows you to show auditors specifically which changes were associated with which tickets and what patching results were achieved as well. This makes for a smooth audit process because the documentation is generated automatically.

4. Maintaining Continuous Compliance

Continuous policy monitoring for critical assets keeps them safer from potential breaches and aligned with regulatory compliance frameworks. Financial entities often experience difficulty with the operational aspects of compliance. Tripwire ExpertOps covers a wide array of compliance requirements across the globe, such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), Payment Card Information Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), Ontario Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Additionally, it allows you to create custom policies to keep your systems in alignment with internal governance frameworks.

Summary

Financial organizations have many challenges to contend with that can be assuaged by a managed services solution like Tripwire ExpertOps. It quickly addresses their challenges at scale and with a lower total cost of ownership.