Solving Security Challenges with Automation to Reduce
Risk and Increase Efficiency across the Hybrid Network
Success story

As the largest multimedia operator in Slovakia, Slovak Telekom operates a very complex
network. To keep pace with business demands, they were in the process of adopting new
cloud platforms and DevOps methodologies, but they struggled to incorporate new practices
into their traditional processes. With an increased volume of requests, it became necessary
to make some changes to prevent loss of control over their firewalls. At the same time, SlovakTelekom wanted to reduce the high number of resources dedicated to ensuring compliancewith internal and external mandates, like ISO 27001 and the looming GDPR requirements.
To select the right solution that would best address their challenges, Slovak Telekom reached
out to Dimension Data for their experience and expertise with network security.

The Basics: A Complex Network
Slovak Telekom operates a large number of firewalls from multiple vendors, making the change
process difficult to manage at best. The existing methods to adhere to security policy wereinefficient and included the use of Excel spreadsheets, which were difficult to maintain andprone to error. In addition, they faced a large project to migrate a quantity of firewalls to Next
Generation Firewalls (NGFWs), and the pressure from the C-suite and compliance officers toensure continuous compliance and pass the next audit was at an all-time high.

The Need: Visibility and Control

The Benefits• Increased the rate of change

implementation by 80% with higher
accuracy• Improved productivity, reduced manualtasks, and eliminated email andspreadsheet tracking by automatingchange processes• Gained visibility and control overconfiguration of multi-vendor firewalls,
devices and routers• Reduced risk through automateddecommissioning of overly permissive
and unused rules• Ensured compliance with ISO 27001 andGDPR with fewer resources

Slovak Telekom could not continue using the same processes; it was only a matter of time before
serious trouble would affect the network. An IT executive expressed concern that their manualchange management process was slow and cumbersome and not the best use of the talented
network security engineers on his staff. “The manual change process was prone to error and badrequests, which meant having to do things more than once – not to mention making the network
less secure.”• Automatically documented changes andSlovak Telekom began the search for a firewall management solution that would simplify theirchange process, eliminate spreadsheet management, reduce error-prone manual tasks andenable the company to improve their overall network security.

• Migrated to NGFW with full confidence

Why Now? Change Was Needed
The main drivers behind Slovak Telekom’s decision to seek a solution included:
Driver #1: rules were not effectively managed
With over 10,000 rules to manage, the Slovak Telekom staff did not have the necessary visibility
to understand why many rules existed and had no way to make sense of the environment
to understand which rules were required for business connectivity and which rules could bedeleted. Manually tracking and removing rules was very complicated and time consuming for ateam that had many other priorities to address. Without an efficient process, changes resulted
in redundant, shadowed and obsolete rules, leaving the network vulnerable.

www.tufin.com

rule recertification to continuously fulfill
audit requirements• Recertification workflow leveraged toautomate the processing of expired rulesthat policies are transferred accurately

Driver #2: firewall migration
Because of a project to migrate from traditional to NGFWs, it was necessary for Slovak Telecom toensure that all firewall rules were properly transferred and implemented. At the end of the migration,
the company planned for approximately 90% of their existing firewall environment to be NGFW.
Driver #3: passing internal audit
Slovak Telekom required a more effective solution to ease the burden of passing internal andexternal security audits and needed an auditable change process to replace emails and Excel files.
They also had a compliance requirement to manage and track the expiration for all access rules.

The Solution: Visibility and Automation
Slovak Telekom made a decision to adopt a Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) solution
to track and monitor the rule change process. The goal was to provide the simplicity that comeswith a single network view to gain visibility across their entire network. With a multi-vendor firewall
infrastructure, using each individual firewall vendor management tool to solve their challenges
would not have provided the relief needed to streamline operations.
With the help of Dimension Data, Slovak Telekom launched a review process to select a vendor.

The Decision: Why Tufin?
Dimension Data understood Slovak Telekom’s needs from the beginning. “It is a high priority for
Dimension Data to develop a close relationship with the key influencers on any project to gain a deep
understanding of their goals,” said Vladimír Ružička, Managing Director of Dimension Data Slovakia.
Following six months of research, evaluation and due diligence, and a thorough proof ofconcept (POC) with the corporate security and operations teams, Slovak Telekom selected Tufin
Orchestration Suite because it had the best workflow solution and could be fully deployed withina couple of months.
TMThe Deployment: Instant Value with a Phased Approach
Slovak Telekom had a tight timeline, and Dimension Data was enlisted to help the company deploy
Tufin SecureTrack and Tufin SecureChange. Only a month later, the solution was in production
managing 34 of their multi-vendor firewalls. Step by step, they added more firewalls to Tufin
Orchestration Suite until they connected Slovak Telekom’s entire estate.
By taking a phased approach to adding firewalls, Slovak Telekom was able to open access for
all technicians to submit change requests. All the users were fully trained and now use Tufin
Orchestration Suite directly for all change requests.

The Results: Improved Productivity, Security and Compliance
Slovak Telekom fully integrated Tufin Orchestration Suite into their everyday processes, and close
to 80% of their technicians use the solution daily to request changes. Through the implementationof Tufin Orchestration Suite, the company has achieved the following:
Automated processing of expired rules: Engineers can add a one-year expiration for eachaccess request and leverage the recertification workflow to automate the processing of expired
rules.
Reduced time to implement changes: Productivity gains were experienced immediately as
they reduced the time it takes to implement a change from 1 week to 1-2 days, eliciting positive
feedback across the company.
Increased productivity: After the ramp-up time, the operations team now handles
approximately 200 requests per month.

www.tufin.com“A firewall without a guard to
manage it is a security concern.”
Slovak Telekom senior IT executive“In the case of Slovak Telekom, wewere confident that Tufin was the rightchoice to meet their needs,”
Vladimir Ruzicka,
Managing Director Dimension Data Slovakia

Immediate productivity gains: “Already implemented” requests were eliminated which
improved productivity by 20%-30% immediately.
Streamlined processes: It is now much faster to approve or reject requests with thestreamlined approval processes.
Simplified compliance: With changes automatically documented, Slovak Telekom effectively
fulfills not only the defined internal security requirements, but also the requirements of ISO
27001 and GDPR.
Validated firewall migration: Throughout the process of migrating firewalls to virtualplatforms, many firewall rules were decommissioned. Tufin Orchestration Suite tracked therule base during the migration and verified that the policy remained intact after the migration.

The Future: Automating, Unifying Security Policy and Integrating
Third Parties
Slovak Telekom achieved baseline visibility, increased productivity and improved security. Thecompany intends to delve deeper into the Tufin Orchestration Suite automation capabilities toremove manual processes and expand the usage to other areas of the network. The next step isto define security zones and configure the Unified Security Policy (USP) in partnership with the ITteam to tighten controls and reduce the attack surface. They will also use Tufin APIs to integratewith third party tools to address additional use cases.

About Slovak Telekom
Slovak Telekom has long been a leader in technological innovations on the Slovak Telecommunication
market. The company is the biggest provider of wired broadband internet through optical andmetallic networks (FTTX, ADSL, VDSL). Slovak Telekom also provides digital television via thelatest IPTV and DVB-S2 satellite technology. In the field of mobile communication, the company
provides internet access using several technologies of high-speed data transmission - GPRS/EDGE, UMTS FDD/HSDPA/H SUPA, Flash-OFDM and LTE.
Slovak Telekom is a member of the multinational Deutsche Telekom Group.

About Dimension Data
Dimension Data is a global systems integrator and managed services provider that designs,manages, and optimizes today’s evolving technology environments to enable our clients toleverage data in a digital age. We employ over 28,000 employees across 47 countries on fivecontinents and we invest heavily in innovation to bring together the world’s best technologies, fromconsulting, technical and support services to a fully managed service.

About Tufin
Tufin® is the leader in Network Security Policy Orchestration, serving more than half of the top
50 companies in the Forbes Global 2000. Tufin simplifies management of some of the largest,
most complex networks in the world, consisting of thousands of firewall and network devices andemerging hybrid cloud infrastructures. Enterprises select the award-winning Tufin Orchestration
Suite™ to increase agility in the face of ever-changing business demands while maintaining
a robust security posture. Tufin reduces the attack surface and meets the need for greater
visibility into secure and reliable application connectivity. Its network security automation enables
enterprises to implement changes in minutes with proactive risk analysis and continuous policy
compliance. Tufin serves over 2,000 customers spanning all industries and geographies; its
products and technologies are patent-protected in the U.S. and other countries.
Copyright © 2018 Tufin
Tufin and SecureChange are registered trademarks of Tufin.
Unified Security Policy, Tufin Orchestration Suite, SecureTrack and SecureApp aretrademarks of Tufin. All other product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registeredtrademarks of their respective owners.

www.tufin.com

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