Banking and InsuranceGroup Simplifies Its
Monitoring and Forensics
Operations with Gigamon“Above all, the Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline simplifies
our environment. Our two data centers operate asymmetricrouting within a multivendor environment. Gigamon allows us
to simplify and homogenize the systems we need to attach tothis infrastructure.”
MARC DAEMEN

A senior systems engineer in KBC’s Telecom
Quality and Performance Management Group

CHALLENGE

SOLUTION

CUSTOMER BENEFITS+ Simplify and streamline visibilityGigamon® DeepObservability Pipeline+ Targeted data filtering maximizes

within a hybrid environment+ Mitigate security threats+ Centralize multivendor data center
environment with a single solution

CUSTOMER SUCCESS | KBC BANKING

visibility with centralized solution+ Reduced OpEx by eliminating
acquisition of additional TAPs
+ Improved scalability by enhancing
load balancing and traffic aggregation

CHALLENGES
KBC, like many large institutions, needs to operate
the very best management systems in order tomitigate against security threats. It also needs
to operate systems for network management,
performance monitoring, and forensic analysis.
Many of these systems are operated by different
departments within the group’s IT organization, butthey all need to access the same network traffic. And
as the number and scale of its security, monitoring,and forensics systems has grown, so has thecomplexity of connecting them to its network.
The company needed a way to provide different
departments, and different tools and appliances,with traffic from the same sources, and to avoid thecomplexity and costs that would have come frominstalling multiple parallel fiber TAPs.
“The network team and the security team havetheir own tools, but the source data they requireis the same. We needed a way of efficiently
and simply connecting the network to thesedifferent appliances,” said Marc Daemen, a seniorsystems engineer in KBC’s Telecom Quality andPerformance Management Group.
The team established a secure data center visibility
project to find a solution to its problem. KBC’sinternational IT project team made a group-widedecision to select Gigamon based on a stringent listof criteria.

KBC installed the Gigamon solution in two data
centers in Belgium, which are connected via
KBC’s own private DWDM fiber link. In turn,these are connected by further fiber links to two
more data centers in Hungary to create a highly
resilient infrastructure.
The Gigamon solution has evolved into an
important component in KBC’s infrastructure,
allowing it to deliver the right traffic to different
platforms as needed. For example, to facilitate
KBC’s virtual data center technology, it needed
ERSPAN compatibility. It enables KBC to collect all
the source data and terminate the ERSPAN tunnels
inside the Gigamon product, avoiding the overheadof terminating them in a conventional switch. Marc
Daemen commented, “Gigamon was one of only
a few vendors that could demonstrate a working
ERSPAN implementation.”

RESULTS
Now KBC has visibility into its internet access,unified communications, and its connections
within the data center. The security department ispresented with the data it needs, and other traffic issent to monitoring or forensics systems for capacitymanagement. The solution has saved the costof deploying multiple fiber taps, and it also loadbalances and aggregates traffic so that KBC canscale its tools more efficiently. KBC doesn’t needto send all the data to every tool, because it canfilter out just the traffic that’s needed, which saves
processing on the tools and storage resources.

SOLUTIONKBC had worked with Gigamon for several years,
using its systems to do basic traffic aggregation
and was impressed with their reliability. KBC
approached a local Gigamon partner, SIMAC, to help
it engineer a solution to its problem. Marc Daemen
said, “We hadn’t had a single hardware failure on
our Gigamon systems in over seven years — eversince they were installed — so we had confidence inGigamon, and a good relationship with SIMAC, who
had always supported us through any integration
issues and ensured close collaboration between all
three parties.”

CUSTOMER SUCCESS | KBC BANKINGThe Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline has also
simplified KBC’s operational environment by
aggregating the relevant traffic back to one
location, making it easier for KBC to act on theintelligence it has gathered.
Marc Daemen said, “Above all, the Gigamon DeepObservability Pipeline simplifies our environment.
Our two data centers operate asymmetric routing
within a multivendor environment. Gigamon allows
us to simplify and homogenize the systems weneed to attach to this infrastructure.”02

Deploying a Gigamon platform in each data centerand aggregating traffic back to a single site means
KBC can present data to its analysis tools as though
they are attached to a single data center, but using
Gigamon VLAN tagging, it can still see where theoriginal traffic flows originated.
Going forward, KBC knows it will face newchallenges such as implementing SoftwareDefined Networks and further virtualization of its
IT environment, but it is confident it has built avisibility platform that can evolve to its businessneeds. Marc Daemen said, “We will need virtual
data center visibility, not just for individualcomponents but for the entire enterprise. The
Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline meets ourneeds today, but importantly, the way it is built
allows our tools to evolve for the future — whether
that’s feeding them NetFlow data or decrypting SSL
traffic or supporting new virtualized environments.”

ABOUT GIGAMON
Gigamon offers a deep observability pipeline thatharnesses actionable network-level intelligenceto amplify the power of observability tools. Thispowerful combination enables IT organizations
to assure security and compliance governance,
speed root-cause analysis of performancebottlenecks, and lower operational overhead
associated with managing hybrid and multi-cloud
IT infrastructures. The result: Modern enterprises
realize the full transformational promise of thecloud. Gigamon serves more than 4,000 customers
worldwide, including over 80 percent of Fortune
100 enterprises, 9 of the 10 largest mobile network
providers, and hundreds of governments andeducational organizations worldwide. To learn more,please visit gigamon.com.

ABOUT KBC
KBC is an integrated banking and insurance group,catering mainly to retail, small and medium-sizedenterprises, and mid-sized customers. It operates
in its home market of Belgium as well as in theCzech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary,and Ireland. KBC was created in 1989, following
the merger of two large Belgian banks and aninsurance company. It now has 36,000 employees
and manages total assets worth more than 200
billion euros.

© 2023 Gigamon. All rights reserved. Gigamon and the Gigamon logo are trademarks of Gigamon in the United States and/or other countries. Gigamon trademarks can be found atgigamon.com/legal-trademarks. All other trademarks are the trademarks of their respective owners. Gigamon reserves the right to change, modify, transfer, or otherwise revise thispublication without notice.

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3300 Olcott Street, Santa Clara, CA 95054 USA+1 (408) 831-4000 | gigamon.com

CUSTOMER SUCCESS | KBC BANKING

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