MSSP Needed Advanced Protection and Microsegmentation

Managed security service provider (MSSP) Italtel, which started in Italy and now operates in the B2B market in Brazil, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2021. In 2018, the telecommunications organization set up a business unit in Brazil specifically aimed at managing enterprise information security demands. The company has grown to have a strong presence throughout Latin America, and is now also operating in Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Peru.

The challenge

The shortage of cybersecurity professionals and the fact that only 10% of the companies in Brazil assign a specific budget for security — very often below their real needs — translates into a demand Italtel MSSP intends to fulfill by providing high-quality differentiated services.

Adonias Filho is the Senior Sales Manager at Italtel and the person responsible for developing the information security market in Brazil and Latin America. He notes that among the differentiators of Italtel MSSP is the fact that it offers its services to companies not only in all markets, but also of all sizes.

Before it forms partnerships, Italtel MSSP takes into account the challenges highlighted by forward-looking studies performed by the most reputed global market analysis companies. Filho points out that cybercrime is at least three to four years ahead of most of the technologies existing today.

The solution

Italtel saw in Akamai Guardicore Segmentation the features required to successfully face these challenges and shrink the distance between defense tools and criminal attacks.  In addition, Italtel MSSP is proud to be the first MSSP in Brazil to integrate the Akamai Guardicore Segmentation technology into its offerings to improve its services and provide even more unique value to its customers.

“We were looking precisely for disruptive technologies capable of presenting advanced protection metrics,” he says.

Microsegmentation today and tomorrow

Today, the perimeter of the corporate network has disappeared, and this trend will continue to grow. The remote workforce push instigated by the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored this issue, making it evident that it is not effective to build defenses based on traditional tools such as firewalls. In face of this reality, Italtel MSSP selected Akamai as a strategic partner.

Italtel’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) platform is composed of a series of products combined to offer their clients the best possible protection in each particular case. As such, microsegmentation technology could not be missing.

“We know that micro-segmentation is a fact that will only become a reality in the market during the coming years. It is a need that has been long felt — but unfortunately never [previously] been achieved in an effective way. The microsegmentation projects have been catastrophic because it is not possible to segregate something if you don’t know exactly what it is,” says Filho.

“With Akamai, I was able to implement microsegmentation rapidly and with stability — that is to say, without any problems.”

The client can choose to contract Italtel MSSP for only Akamai monitoring and provide integration with its own Security Operations Center or contract the full service, including all the areas that Italtel’s MDR covers.

“Brazil is one of the countries where cybercrime is most active, and where the investment in security is very often treated as a luxury accessory. Even where there is information security, the security departments are on the lean side. Noting this characteristic of the market, we are offering a solution which is going to enhance both the perception of the environment and the control over this environment. What I want at the end of the day is that the company continues to focus on its business, while I manage security with Akamai, granting a new level of cybersecurity maturity to our client,” says Filho.

The results

The visibility that the Akamai Guardicore Segmentation platform offers is the starting point for Italtel MSSP to put forward scenarios — which it designs based on the expertise of its intelligence and governance teams — and present risk metrics. The combination of technology and consultative knowledge provides clients with a high maturity level at a low investment.

Data exfiltration, in particular, requires the kind of protection that Akamai provides. It is one of the items that most threatens information security, considering the ease and variety of IT consumption (combining data centers, as well as private and public clouds), in addition to shadow IT activities and the very dynamism of businesses.

Filho comments, “Protection in data centers and clouds defends, at the origin, the companies that subcontract provider services. Why try to invade directly a large company, with its defenses up to speed, if there is an open door to it through a provider from whom it outsourced, for example, its financial department? Why attack companies one by one, if it is possible, in one go, to infiltrate many of them?”

The Italtel MDR platform is entrusted with identifying real threats to clients and mitigating them with multiple operational tools.

“It is within this structure that we will aggregate all the value that being a MSSP with Akamai brings to the market,” says Filho.