Banca Popolare
di Sondrio,
a story ofinnovationand security

Banca Popolare di Sondrio     popso.it

Established in 1871, Banca Popolare di Sondrio is one of Italy’s oldest cooperative banks and is considered a leader intechnological innovation

Public sector• Sondrio, Italy• Established in 1871
• Kaspersky Endpoint Security for
Business Advanced / Kaspersky
Private Security Network

Technological innovation has beena distinctive factor in Banca Popolare
di Sondrio’s 140-year history.
Since the 1990s, which saw the development of a customer service center thatplaced the organization at the cutting edge of the Italian banking landscape,Banca Popolare di Sondrio has always sought the most advanced technologicalsolutions, both for the management of day-to-day activities, and providing
services to customers and security.

Challenge
Innovation has been a distinctive factor in the history of Banca Popolare diSondrio (BPS), in relation to both services for customers and security. In 1993
the bank developed a customer service center, employing over 200 membersof staff and placing the organization at the cutting edge of the Italian bankinglandscape.
“We see innovation as an opportunity that drives experimentation. It is in thebank’s DNA and this approach is something that is also shared by IT,” explains
Piergiorgio Spagnolatti, Head of Infrastructure at Banca Popolare di Sondrio.

“Kaspersky Lab is infull agreement with ourphilosophical approachto security. Rather thansimply patching up
a problem, we are bothinterested in identifying
an issue within anecosystem to provide
an organic response.”
Piergiorgio Spagnolatti
Head of InfrastructureBanca Popolare di Sondrio“Our choices are not based on market shares. Instead, we use criteria linked
to the specific characteristics of our organization and to the stringent tests
we carry out to assess the performance of the solutions and how they would
integrate with our existing systems.
“We also value a vendor’s capacity for innovation: we ask ourselves how wella given solution will survive over time, not just if it will satisfy our immediate
requirements. More generally, we always try to find out how prepared thesupplier is for the future, and if it has a roadmap.”
This attitude, which is deeply embedded in the history of the Lombardybased
institution, also led to the collaboration with Kaspersky Lab, which wasestablished at a time when the company felt that its cybersecurity
performance was not up to standard.
“In 2012 we were dissatisfied with the IT security solutions we had in place. The
roadmap was inadequate, the software was outdated and, most importantly,
we didn’t feel that our supplier could ensure a sufficient degree of innovation,”adds Spagnolatti.

2SecureEffective in identifying attemptedattacks

ControlSimple solutions that facilitate
accelerated learning

Performance
Lightweight solutions with very
limited impact on IT performance

In the short term, the bank looked for a partner that was capable of ensuring
effective protection against attacks, ease of management and a low impact on
endpoint performance.
“The initial phase of our relationship with Kaspersky Lab involved several
thousands of devices, including desktops, laptops and smartphones. We wereimpressed with the freshness of the solution, especially as it eradicated theissue of complexity of use that other vendors claimed was unavoidable.”Once the urgent issue of endpoints had been resolved, Banca Popolare
di Sondrio decided to look to the future and try out other Kaspersky Labsolutions. It began with email, and then the data centers, which house 99% of
the virtualized server inventory.
“We liked the idea of introducing security solutions across the board and, in thiscase, we also had confirmation of a precise roadmap which came at the righttime to satisfy our requirements,” says Spagnolatti.

A new phase
Six years after the first meeting, Banca Popolare di Sondrio has activatedmore than 11,000 Kaspersky Lab licenses relating to endpoints, email andservers. “Kaspersky Lab is in full agreement with our philosophical approachto security. Rather than simply patching up a problem, we are both interested
in identifying an issue within an ecosystem to provide an organic response,”
adds Spagnolatti. It is not surprising therefore, that this partnership continues
to grow, looking toward the future, specifically to cover targeted attacks andadvanced threats.

3

2,600employees

330
branches

2

Indeed, in 2017 Banca Popolare di Sondrio completed what it describes as ‘themost in-depth market analysis we have ever conducted’. The aim was to identify
a supplier capable of helping the organization defend itself better against
advanced threats and those specifically directed at the bank’s systems. The
chosen product was Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack Platform.
“We observed the solution’s extremely high level of efficacy. There was also
the added benefit that the solution integrates with the other Kaspersky Lab
components we already had in place. Indeed, in this context, success wasdetermined by coverage that analyzes internet traffic, email, DNS and endpoints.
Seeing how this new solution interfaced with others helped us reach our finaldecision,” concludes Spagnolatti.

data centers

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