CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

Del Monte Foods Chooses
Consistent, Flexible, andScalable Security for Its
Cloud-First Strategy

Customer-at-a-Glance
Del Monte Foods, Inc.
Industry
Consumer food products
Number of Users
7,000 employees
Sophos Solutions
Sophos Synchronized Security
Sophos Intercept X Advanced with EDR
Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Server
Sophos Central Web Protection Advanced
Sophos Central Device Encryption
Sophos RED (Remote Ethernet Device)
Sophos XG Firewall
Sophos Technical Account Manager (TAM)

Del Monte Foods, Inc. A customer success story

Del Monte Foods, Inc. is a food production company
and a household name with a long history in the foodindustry, promoting recognizable brands like Del
Monte®, Contadina®, College Inn®, and S&W®. In 2014,
Philippines-based food producer Del Monte Pacific Limited
acquired Del Monte’s consumer food business. With its
state-of-the-art research center and headquarters in
the Bay Area, the long-established organization values
innovation and stays on top of the latest technology trends
to further its business goals. Del Monte takes pride in its
brand and its culture, which is driven by a strong workethic, mutual support, and the spirit of collaboration. Del
Monte owns and operates 10 food production facilities,
three distribution centers, and multiple offices acrossthe U.S., as well as two production facilities in Mexico.

‘Ever since
we switched
to Sophos,
we have notexperienced
any endpoint
problems.’
PJ Balsley
Director, IT Technology, Security,and Operations
Del Monte Foods, Inc.

PJ Balsley, director of IT technology, security, and operations, calls
Del Monte “the 100-year-old start-up”—and for good reason. Froman IT perspective, as he points out, Del Monte’s infrastructureis only a few years old. When the consumer food business wassold, the IT infrastructure had to be built from scratch by its lean
IT team of six, as no technology resources were inherited fromthe parent company. Shortly after the sale, the IT team spenttime laying the groundwork. They developed policies and set a
standards framework for all systems—workstations, servers,network equipment, and other devices—detailing what access,activities, and applications were permitted and even defining
encryption policies at a granular level. After the foundational
work was completed internally, the company made a decision
to outsource 98% of its IT functions to an extended team ofapproximately 130 people to a global IT provider.

Challenges
ÌÌ Provide consistent, flexible, and scalable security to multiple
locations, large and small, across North America
ÌÌ Identify a vendor that could provide compatible and complete
protection for a 100% cloud-enabled organization
ÌÌ Defend valuable intellectual property and othervital corporate data residing in the cloud against
ransomware and advanced malware attacks
ÌÌ Ensure that all users—regardless of location—areproductive and safe, while the IT team enjoys continualvisibility across the entire technology infrastructureÌÌ Maintain a diligent security strategy while
maximizing finite IT resources

Del Monte Foods, Inc. A customer success story

What role does security playin a cloud-first corporate
environment
At the forefront of technology trends, Del Monteleveraged the cloud and centralized management
capabilities to support its business needs andtechnical requirements. While this strategy has
been extremely beneficial for increasing theorganization’s agility, it has also made the IT teamhighly security conscious and proactive aboutprotecting endpoints, the network, and sensitive
corporate data, such as its valuable intellectualproperty, which resides on external cloud platforms.
For Balsley and his team, security is always abalancing act. “We’re not a technology company,
but, similar to most other organizations, we rely
heavily on technology to run our core business. Any
disruptions that prevent someone from doing theirjob efficiently is an immense problem,” he says. “Onthe IT side, we evaluate solutions incredibly carefully
before we deploy them. We are continually asking
ourselves whether those solutions are truly beneficial
to the organization or whether they will create
problems that interfere with productivity,” he says.
Del Monte needed a vendor that would meld
seamlessly with its cloud-first strategy, provide
transparent protection for its diverse user baseacross multiple locations, and enable the IT team
to fulfill its rigorous security requirements.

How does an organization
with multiple offices andmobile workers protect its
valuable IP and assets?
The IT team was well aware that Del Monte’s
valuable research and intellectual property (IP)made it a target of choice for adversaries. Theyknew that attacks could potentially put Del
Monte’s vital corporate data at risk and result inbusiness downtime. Balsley and his team madethe decision to adopt Sophos when the company
was hit with a series of advanced malware and
CryptoLocker ransomware attacks, which thelegacy endpoint solution was unable to block.

Del Monte Foods, Inc. A customer success story

Balsley and his team first deployed Sophos
Central Endpoint Protection. The solution provides
Del Monte with a broad spectrum of endpoint
protection: signatureless malware detection,
host intrusion prevention, category-based web
filtering—enforced both on and off the corporate
network—application control, peripheral control tomanage access to removable media and mobiledevices, and data loss prevention to restrict
unauthorized data flow. The centralized cloud-based
management console is intuitive, easy to use, anda perfect fit for Del Monte’s cloud infrastructure.
“Ever since we switched to Sophos, we have notexperienced any endpoint problems. We take anaggressive approach and turn on all the features andcapabilities for that extra measure of protection. Our
team no longer spends the entire day monitoring
endpoints, or continuously examining log files. WithSophos, we know our endpoints are healthy andoperating as they should. I feel very comfortable that
our endpoints are well protected,” asserts Balsley.
The team also added Sophos Intercept X Advanced
to block and remove residual ransomware fromprevious attacks and prevent future attacks. Sophos
Intercept X Advanced safeguards endpoints against
known and unknown threats through its signaturelessexploit prevention, deep learning malware
detection, and advanced ransomware protection.
“We haven’t had any CryptoLocker issues since
our Sophos deployment. Intercept X excellently
blocked infected files and reverted those files backto their previously known good state. We’ve seen
it first-hand - Intercept X does an impressive job
at cleaning up previous threats,” relates Balsley.
Another facet of Del Monte’s uncompromising dataprotection plan was to prevent users from saving andsharing vital company data on USB drives that were
not encrypted. Sophos Intercept X Advanced provides
them with a level of control that enables them topermit only approved, encrypted storage devices.
The team took it a step further with Sophos Central
Device Encryption, which they deployed over the airwith just a few clicks. Now all of Del Monte’s systems,
even remote laptops, have full-disk encryption.
As a result, Balsley now knows that encryption
requirements for protecting sensitive data are being
completely met. An established company with brand‘Sophos XG Firewall provides the next
generation protection the team and I needed,
especially when you deploy the Sophos
Firewall with Intercept X Advanced.’
PJ Balsley
Director, IT Technology, Security, and Operations
Del Monte Foods, Inc.

equity like Del Monte is especially concerned aboutmaintaining compliance to preserve the reputation
it has worked so hard to build over the years.
“We’re an extremely dispersed and mobile
organization, with approximately 40 locations—
ranging from large production facilities to remotesmall offices or home offices—so it’s imperative
we encrypt everything. Sophos Central Device
Encryption is an exceptional product for us. It
was easy to roll out full-disk encryption to all
devices and then monitor, audit, and enforce
policies to ensure that all users, even those withadministrative access, weren’t disabling hardware
encryption on their computers,” declares Balsley.
With Del Monte’s departments handling sensitive
data, users needed secure access, something
the legacy solution was unable to provide.
Sophos Central Web Protection Advanced allows
users to safely access authorized Internetbased locations so they can do their jobs while
preventing them from going to unapproved sites.
Rounding out Del Monte’s security posture is Sophos
Intercept X Advanced for Server. Del Monte’s data
center consists of a mixture of Linux and Windowsservers, which house business-critical applications.
The IT team exercises strict change control overthe servers, which are locked down and regulated
by complex firewall rule sets. Even though they are
at incredibly low risk of infection, Sophos security
is nevertheless mandatory. Sophos Intercept X
Advanced for Server secures these systems fromattacks using a combination of traditional andDel Monte Foods, Inc. A customer success storynext-generation techniques, including CryptoGuard
anti-ransomware, WipeGuard for MBR, exploit
prevention, deep-learning, malicious traffic detection,and server lockdown for application whitelisting.

How do you choose the right,
next-generation firewall
for your organization?
To safeguard the network, Balsley and his teamare currently in the process of deploying Sophos
XG Firewalls and Synchronized Security. Prior tosigning on with Sophos, Del Monte relied on anMPLS provider for Internet connectivity at its branchand remote locations. The IT team had no visibility
at all into network activity, and reporting was nonexistent. “I didn’t have the proper visibility into ournetwork security at the time, and that was certainlyterrifying because we had no perspective or holistic
understanding on what was going on,” recalls Balsley.
When evaluating firewalls, the IT team was looking
for a cost-effective solution that could handle themoderate volume of network traffic while offering
next-generation capabilities for the best possiblelevel of security. In comparison, competitive
firewalls tended to be overly and unnecessarily
complex, while other firewalls were costly and weremuch more than Del Monte needed, especiallywhen associated with proposed benefits.
Sophos XG Firewalls and RED devices were thelogical choice. Sophos XG Firewalls provide Balsley
and his team with visibility they never had before—into the network, users, and applications—directlyfrom the control center. Now the team can resolve
any potential issues before they become problems.
Sophos XG Firewalls check all the boxes on theteam’s wishlist—and then some—with intrusion
prevention system (IPS), advanced threat protection(ATP), sandboxing, dual antivirus, web and application
control and visibility, antiphishing, and a full-featured
web application firewall. “Sophos XG Firewall provides
the next generation protection the team and I needed,
especially when you deploy the Sophos Firewall withSophos Intercept X Advanced,” summarizes Balsley.

How does Synchronized
Security coordinate andenhance incident response
and remediation?
Synchronized Security, which leverages unique
Sophos Security Heartbeat™ technology to enableendpoints and firewalls to communicate andshare threat intelligence, is a unique capability ofSophos XG Firewall that Balsley did not necessarily
seek out but was impressed with when he saw
it in action. Synchronized Security immediately
identifies the source of a potential threat andautomatically isolates compromised systems. The
goal of isolating compromised systems is to ensure
the spreading of the infection is eliminated, whileallowing the team to focus on proper processes withdecreased incident response time. “When I learned
more about Synchronized Security, I was definitelyimpressed. It’s truly a cutting-edge solution. My
first reaction was, ‘We need this’,” he remarks.
Synchronized Security alerts his team whenever
there is an issue for any number of reasons.
“Sophos Synchronized Security lets us know when
there is a threat at the endpoint or the edge andif any compromise has taken place. Our team
can then proactively monitor and remediate
issues more quickly,” indicates Balsley.
While Balsley feels confident that corporate
workstations are well-secured with Sophos endpoint
technology, he is concerned about potential risks
introduced by unmanaged devices, such as printers,
personal devices, tablets, smart TVs, and switches.

Del Monte Foods, Inc. A customer success story“My biggest fears revolve around systems wedon’t know about. With Synchronized Security,we have more control over these devices than
we ever had before. It gives us unprecedented
visibility across our entire environment. The
firewalls monitor devices I don’t know about, andthe endpoint protection controls devices I doknow about. Now I can keep an eye on everythingcohesively and receive notifications about potential
issues so that we can research them and get tothe bottom of them immediately,” he explains.
The IT team at Del Monte continues to fine-tune
their security architecture and looks for ways tomake their team more efficient and effective.
Balsley has extended his existing Sophos Premium
Support service to include a technical accountmanager (TAM). Having access to a Sophos
expert helps provide insights, assist with fasterproblem resolution and case escalation, and free
up his staff to work on more strategic projects.
“The greatest benefit of working with a Sophos
TAM is that it allows us to continually tune theenvironment and turn it into a well-oiled machine,where everything runs smoothly and even thesmall issues are addressed,” states Balsley.
He also sees the value in the intelligent enterprisedetection and response (EDR) technology built
into the latest version of Sophos Intercept X
Advanced. EDR provides guided investigation
tools, allowing security teams of any skill level togain a better understanding of their organization’ssecurity postures. This means the IT team canfocus on the business of IT instead of chasing
false positives and dealing with overwhelming
volumes of alerts. It’s another way for Del Monteto add this capability with a limited headcount.
As Balsley points out, Sophos is the ideal fit
for a cloud-based organization like Del Montethat wants to use the best possible tools toadvance their aggressive and broad-ranging
security strategy and fully protect its users,devices, and most importantly, its data and IP.

Del Monte Foods, Inc. A customer success story

According to Balsley, “We wanted to deploy the same
technology across the board, so that it’s consistent,flexible, and scalable for all our locations, large andsmall. Sophos makes that possible. The cloudmanaged platform and centralized management
console gives us complete visibility over theentire organization. It’s especially advantageous
for us because we have a small staff. Our teamcan easily monitor all the alerts and resolve themefficiently, regardless of where users work.”
At the end of the day, Balsley knows he and his teammade the right choice for Del Monte. “We wanted asecurity vendor that understood our needs between
multiple sites as they all have different requirements.
Sophos made sense from a price perspective but
more importantly we were looking for best of breed
products – security solutions on the market that
could fit our needs most completely and scale withus. We wanted strong security that was invisible tothe user – and we were able to get that Sophos. We’ve
seen it work well for us as we have Sophos on both
our endpoints and network. Having the endpoints
and firewall speak to each other is an added bonus,
and that is something no other vendor provides.”‘We wanted todeploy the same
technology acrossthe board, so thatit’s consistent,
flexible, andscalable for all
our locations,large and small.
Sophos makesthat possible.’
PJ Balsley
Director, IT Technology, Security, and Operations
Del Monte Foods, Inc.

Start your free trial of Sophos
Central today to get started withSynchronized Security.

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