CUSTOMER CASE STUDY GHCL LIMITED

Sophos Addresses theHolistic Security Needs ofa Leader in Chemicals &Textiles
Incorporated in 1983, GHCL Limited, a diversified group active in the chemicals,textiles and consumer Products segments has a marketing capitalization ofaround Rs. 3000 crores. In the chemicals sector, the company manufactures
Soda Ash. Its end-to-end textile operations include weaving, dyeing, printing
and processing right up until the finished product is delivered in the formof sheets and duvets, which are exported across the world. The company’sconsumer product division manufactures and sells edible and industrial gradesalt. Its manufacturing facilities are located across distributed locations, andfrom a security prerogative, this presented plenty of challenges. GHCL’s primaryobjective was to build an integrated cybersecurity infrastructure that delivered
extensive security cover across its locations, and which could also be easily
managed from a single location through a unified console.

CUSTOMER-AT-A-GLANCEGHCL Limited
Industry
Manufacturing (Chemicalsand Textiles)
Sophos Customer
Since 2015
Websitewww.ghcl.co.in

Sophos Solutions
Sophos XG Firewall – 330 - Appliance in high availability
Sophos XG Firewall - 210 - Appliance in high availability
Sophos XG Firewall – Four 135 Appliances
Sophos XG Firewall – Three 125 Appliances
Sophos Intercept X Advanced for 800 endpoints
Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Server for 88 servers
Sophos Central Device Encryption – 25 licenses
Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Mobile – 25 licenses

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY GHCL LIMITED“The overarching challenge was that we did not have complete visibility andcontrol of our existing cybersecurity infrastructure and were trying to addresssophisticated threats with legacy OEM solutions. Our core objective was todeploy only the most advanced security solutions, which offered a single paneof glass for all security appliances guarding our network and endpoints.“Vinod Pandey, Head - IT, GHCL

Challenges•

Lack of comprehensive protection against agrowing threat landscape•The ever-increasing risk of falling pretty tocyberattacks•

Data breaches at the network perimeter•

Inability to mitigate risks on external devices
like laptops and desktops especially at a time
when employees are working from home•Absence of visibility into user activities andother information along the same lines thatwould help the IT team make proactive security
decisions•

Incapacity to meet demanding compliancerequirements with respect to end user activity
and trace/log•

Inconsistency in access control on critical ITsystems•

Inefficient process of critical server updates
which meant servers were not updated on time

A Limiting Cybersecurity
Posture before Sophos
The IT Team at GHCL led by Mr. Pandey was
experiencing challenges associated with legacy
security solutions. The existing OEM solutions had
management complexities which were consuming
the already stretched resources of the IT team.
More importantly, irregular technological upgrades
and unreliable software updates were proving toa be a major headache. “We realized our existing
security solutions did not have the capability ofsafeguarding mission critical assets spread acrossour distributed network. Attacks are getting moresophisticated by the day. We couldn’t afford to leave
our endpoints unprotected and therefore wanted tomove to a more cutting-edge and layered approachto security,” explains Mr. Pandey.

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY GHCL LIMITEDThe IT team wanted to speed up threat
identification and remediation and wanted asecurity solution to immediately flag malicious
activities on the network and deliver reliable
protection against threats, both known andunknown. Mr. Pandey wanted a 360-degree
approach to security bolstered with actionable
intelligence shared between network and endpoint,
to automate threat identification and response.

Moving to a More Integrated
Security Approach
A thorough research of the security solutions
available on the market made it very clear thatSophos’ powerful product portfolio exhibited
extremely high standards of performance,deployment, simplicity, usability and advanced
security features.
Sophos also satisfied the IT team’s need fora centralized and secured Control Center for
managing all security appliances. GHCL werealso impressed by Sophos’ next-generation of
cybersecurity which gave them confidence against
the most advanced threats in the present and also
the future.

Another important factor which helped the team
decided in Sophos’ favor was the prospect ofsecuring both their network and endpoints under acommon umbrella.
The team at GHCL worked with Sophos partner M/s
Allot System Integration, who started by designing
the entire security landscape for the company. M/s
Allot System Integration followed up with a proof ofconcept. This left no room for doubt in the IT Team’s
mind that Sophos was best to handle all manner ofsecurity challenges.
GHCL were confident that Sophos Professional
Services would ensure meaningful consultation,
speedier implementation, and a threat landscapedriven configuration of Sophos solutions. Thecustomer believed all their security needs would beaddressed with security best practices from Sophos
Professional Services.

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY GHCL LIMITED

Future Proofing
Cybersecurity Posturewith Advanced Security
Deployments
After evaluating GHCL’s existing cybersecurity
infrastructure and assessing its cybersecurity
requirements, Sophos surmised that theprotective cover the organization needed could beaccomplished using the full spectrum of Sophos
solutions. Sophos XG Firewall, Sophos Central
Intercept X Advanced, Sophos Central Intercept
X Advanced for Server, Sophos Central Device
Encryption and Sophos Intercept X Advanced forMobile were identified as the solutions needed tostrengthen GHCL’s security posture.
Sophos XG Firewall offers excellent visibility andprotection with Xstream Deep-Packet Inspection(DPI) engine that scans traffic for IPS, AV, Web
Protection and App Control in a unified streaming
engine. With Xstream TLS inspection, the firewall
removes security blind spots by delivering visibility
and comprehensive policy tools all backed by builtin intelligence. GHCL also receives protection fromzero-day threats with industry-leading machinelearning technology. The IT team can also configureuser identity-based policies and benefit fromunique user risk analysis to control users. Withapplication control, web protection and advanced
threat protection, GHCL now has a comprehensive
network security cover.

“With XG Firewall, our cybersecurity infrastructure
is empowered by a firewall that seamlessly adapts
to our network, and the IT Team is not pressurized
into adapting the network to the firewall. We gain
the advantage of a huge list of rich features andamazing versatility that secures our environment,”
explains Mr. Pandey.
Mr. Pandey can now ensure that this secure network
can be extended anywhere, with seamless easewith the firewall’s VPN secure access solutions.
With Sophos Intercept X Advanced for endpoint
and server, GHCL obtains signatureless malware
detection backed by deep learning, an advanced
form of machine learning. With this technology,
the customer earns true scalability and increased
effectiveness against unanticipated threats.
Intercept X Advanced allows for cutting-edge
ransomware functionality which ensures GHCL isable to safeguard against the malicious encryption
processes used in ransomware attacks. Add inexploit prevention, application lockdown, webcontrol, and data loss prevention and the IT teamknow GHCL endpoints and servers are protectedagainst all types of threats.
Synchronized Security ensures Sophos solutions
like Intercept X Advanced and Sophos XG
Firewall share data in real-time while responding
automatically to incidents. This helps the IT teamsave significant time, resources, and effort.
With Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Mobile, GHCL
benefits from secure Unified Endpoint Management(UEM) solutions which help the IT Team spend lesstime and effort otherwise spent in managing andsecuring traditional and mobile endpoints.
The GHCL team can ensure uniform security
policies are pushed across multiple endpoints andboth users and the organization at large benefit
from consistent polies. Intercept X Advanced for
Mobile delivers a superior level of protection thatsecures mobile devices against ransomware,
network attacks and exploits.
“We are able to leverage the powerful set of security
tools offered by Intercept X for Mobile to protect
our employees’ mobile devices from malicious
websites, phishing text messages, and unsafe
downloads and links. Today our employees are morereliant on their mobile devices than ever before andcomprehensive mobile security allows them to use
these devices with confidence,” explains Mr. Pandey.
Integrated into Sophos Central, Sophos Central
Device Encryption, helps the IT team manage
Windows BitLocker and macOS FileVault native
device encryption. The customer can deploy
and start protecting valuable data in quick time.
Encryption policies can be pushed with just a few
clicks and the GHCL team can now easily securedata on laptops of employees that are working fromhome.
The additional benefit is that all Sophos security
solutions can be managed from a unified console –Sophos Central.

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY GHCL LIMITEDA Robust and BusinessCentric Cybersecurity
Infrastructure
GHCL has experienced tangible business benefits
following the deployment of Sophos security
solutions. The return on investment (ROI) onsecurity appliances has increased by 50%. The
IT team is saving 90% on man hours, which werepreviously spent responding to security incidents.
The threats to servers and endpoints have also
seen 90-100% reduction, which has proved that thelayered approach to security has delivered immensesecurity value.
“We have reduced the capital expenses on security
appliances by 50% since deploying Sophos
solutions. We no longer have to spend a substantial
portion of our time resolving security incidents. This
allows our IT Team to invest time and resourcesin other activities which can further maximize thepotential of our IT infrastructure,” shares Mr. Pandey.

now firmly in place, the customer experiences low
impact on PC performance. Currently real time
threat alerts have ensured the IT team is moreproactive than reactive to cyber threats and security
incidents. The company has benefited immenselyfrom the availability of comprehensive logs fromSophos Central, which allows GHCL to meet allcompliance regulations. With GHCL’s move towards
next generation security solutions, there is now aconcrete incident response plan in place backed
by the expertise of highly trained IT-engineers fromSophos.
“Sophos is simple, affordable, scalable and easyto manage. With the security ROI delivered byour existing Sophos solutions, we are planning toextend our protection with Sophos EDR, Sophos
Network Access Control (NAC) and benefit from its
next-gen AI/ML powered product suite. Based on
our experience on Sophos products so far, we canstrongly recommend Sophos to all organizations
who want to build a strong and extendable
cybersecurity infrastructure,” concludes Mr. Pandey.

Furthermore, GHCL is now saving on the cost of
replacing security appliances every 3 years andsupplementary security infrastructure. With Sophos(Optional) Insert Sophos CTA.

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2022-01-12 CCS-EN (NP)