Marine Credit Union
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Marine Credit Union is on a mission to advance the lives of people from a place of financial need to a life of ownership and giving back.
| Executive Summary |
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| Customer Name: Marine Credit Union Industry: Financial Services Location: Headquartered in La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA Number of Employees: 400+ |
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| Challenges |
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Building a top- notch security solution with a tight budget
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Defending highly targeted data against online criminals and nation states
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Safeguarding members financial information and assets from phishing attacks, ransomware, data exfiltration, and more- with a system focused on simplicity and efficiency
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| Solutions |
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Cisco Secure Endpoint (formerly AMP for Endpoints)- Essentials Package
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Cisco Secure Malware Analytics (formerly Threat Grid)
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Cisco Umbrella
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Cisco Secure Firewall (formerly Next- Generation Firewall)
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Cisco SecureX Threat Response
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Cisco AnyConnect
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Cisco DUO
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Cisco Meraki
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Cisco SecureX
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Cisco Switching/ Routing
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| Results |
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The simplicity of contextual menus enables a single right click to immediately send a hash to allow or deny lists saving time for MCU’s security team
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File Trajectory provides visibility on endpoint history to make investigations speedier and more complete supporting operational efficiency
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File Analysis (both automatic and manual) provides all relevant indicators to understand threats quickly and concisely
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Scheduled updates are distributed across time as to not affect network and system performance supporting crucial business continuity
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Marine Credit Union (MCU) was founded by hardworking people and their name is derived from the credit union formed in 1949 to serve the employees of Mercury Marine, a Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, manufacturer of outboard motors. Their commitment to community has been a guiding principle since they opened the doors to their first branch nearly a century ago. It’s helped MCU expand to locations in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, where they serve over 90,000 members today.
It also inspired them to create the Marine Credit Union Foundation in 2014, which has raised over $800,000 and contributed to over 950 charitable causes in just six years of existence.
From efficient solutions to a stronger, unified security platform
When IT Security Manager Elliott Bujan first arrived at Marine Credit Union there were several Cisco solutions in place including network routers, switches and Secure Endpoint. Bujan faced the same challenges that so many businesses are up against now – putting the right tools in place to protect against advanced threats and deliver the best protection for remote workers while maintaining their productivity.
Since Bujan’s arrival there has been further adoption of Cisco security solutions such as expanding Umbrella usage and adopting AnyConnect and DUO for additional security to support remote user access and policy implementation.
“When comparing the competition, they may have fancy boxes and graphs, but I mean to be honest, I like the simplicity of Secure Endpoint and the new Cisco Secure UI and having less distractions around it. The whole solution is working!”
Elliott Bujan, IT Security Manager, Marine Credit Union
Bujan explains that having visibility across Endpoints is a priority. “My challenge is first to have visibility to the devices, the data they can potentially store and how the security solution can be updated. As we have a small team, I am looking for dashboard- type landing tools where I can get visibility (to potential threats) with minimal clicks (e.g. handy widgets of Umbrella with SecureX).”
“The other things I am looking for is efficiency and ease of management. Secure Endpoint in my experience has been really easy to deploy and update. Also, the Umbrella agent through the AnyConnect module is very easy to deploy and maintain. And that is what I am looking for in technology, especially as my Security Team is small and assisted by our Help Desk and Networking Teams.”
“We are satisfied with Secure Endpoint, as we feel it covers a good perimeter and it blocks a lot.“ Bujan agreed with Cisco Security when we say Umbrella is the first line of defense and Secure Endpoint is the last line of defense. This approach took Marine Credit Union to a next step in their security journey. In addition Bujan see’s additional value in Secure Firewall natively integrating with these two solutions. And the testament to Cisco Security and the SecureX platform with XDR (Extended Detection and Response) capabilities; “It’s true that financial compliance plays a role as we communicate with the regulators, but at the end of the day, it’s about protecting the data, and we do that with the integration of Secure Endpoint, Umbrella and Secure Firewall which combines to protect the networks, endpoints, workstations and servers – and all of this can be correlated easily within SecureX.”
“..at the end of the day, it’s about protecting the data, and we do that with the integration of Secure Endpoint, Umbrella and Secure Firewall which combines to protect the networks, endpoints, workstations and servers – and all of this can be correlated easily within SecureX.”
Elliott Bujan, IT Security Manager, Marine Credit Union
Bujan experiences time savings with Cisco Security, “..by working with the combination of Secure Endpoint and Umbrella, the Talos Intelligence saves me a lot of time. I know that with Talos’ timely intelligence, specific hashes or domains will be blocked automatically. With some exceptions I do manually update the allow and deny lists, but its infrequent.”
In addition, he sees that ease of use is huge. Bujan explains, “I can also go to the Talos blogs, cut and paste the IOCs and quickly add them into SecureX Threat Response – it’s like using a browser plug-in, a full list of observables saves time. I can copy text – quickly identify IP addresses, domain names, hashes, etc. with no need to do any formatting.”
And the small things add up to time savings as well, “I get a realistic 15% time savings of not having to do manual, mundane tasks.”
Bujan mentions some quick examples of this;
1. “I save about an hour a day by reducing threat investigation/hunting tasks”
2. “I don’t have to update the allow or deny lists”
3. “SSO with SecureX has helped, actually, it’s very convenient”
In addition, just “hearing about the SecureX Ribbon and having threat context follow you from screen to screen, and build information and correlation intelligence in the background, is also what I am looking for in automation!”
When asked why Cisco Security was chosen over other vendors to support Marine Credit Union on this journey, Bujan discussed Cisco’s unique simplicity and more practical implementation of the new UI available on the SecureX platform. Bujan went on to say, “when comparing the competition, they may have fancy boxes and graphs, but I mean to be honest, I like the simplicity of Secure Endpoint and the new Cisco Secure UI and having less distractions around it. The whole solution is working!”
“One of the positive things I get from Cisco is the close relationship with the Account Team, either for contract management, licensing or updates on new products and features.”
Now that Marine Credit Union has started to build its unified security platform, it plans to extend its capabilities with more experience on the SecureX platform to create even more operational efficiencies and further take advantage of the benefits of automation.
“One of the positive things I get from Cisco is the close relationship with the Account Team, either for contract management, licensing or updates on new products and features.”
Elliott Bujan, IT Security Manager, Marine Credit Union
For more information on the Cisco portfolio and platform approach to security, go to cisco.com/go/secure.