As a strategic partner of IBM Security, ISA Cybersecurity was invited to present a partnership success story at the recent IBM Think Summit Canada 2020 in the Security and Cyber Resilience track. This story recognizes the shared achievements of our team, our client, and our partner. Watch the 10 min talk here.
Enza Alexander, ISA Cybersecurity’s Executive Vice President, shared a compelling story of how a leading Canadian energy provider optimized their SOC and SIEM with the partnership of ISA Cybersecurity and IBM’s QRadar software. The client in this success story supports and manages a utility in one of the largest markets in Canada, servicing nearly 800,000 clients. And the story of our partnership with them aligned perfectly with the themes of innovation, collaboration, and transformation that make IBM Think Summits so exciting.
Alexander’s remarks opened with an introduction to the client and our relationship with them. After an extensive proof-of-concept implementation, the client selected IBM QRadar technology over nine years ago. Their goal was to use the application to manage their wide array of IT and IoT industrial controls, assist them in understanding what their ERP and SAP requirements were, and to clearly identify the “crown jewels, digital assets and applications that need to be managed and monitored” from a cybersecurity perspective.
More recently, however, the client recognized they could realize even more benefits by building a partnership with ISA as a managed services partner. In the 18 months we have collaborated with the client and IBM, we have not only helped them secure their assets, but we have worked together to identify and prioritize their cyber security posture improvements, and what their overall cybersecurity program can help them achieve.
ISA “enable[s] the client to have a secondary team that they can rely on for world-class technology from IBM, and a set of well-thought-out procedures and systems that are managing life services,” remarked Alexander. The key is “bringing in a service provider that could help with triage, with technical sharing of ideas, who have experience in other areas (including utility-based and government-based) that could help them understand some of the strategies that other organizations are utilizing as they leverage IBM technology to be able to improve the services that they are delivering”.
The experience that ISA brings in real-world implementations of technology is essential for client success and maximizing the return on a company’s cybersecurity investment. After upgrading the client to the current version of QRadar, Alexander observed how ISA helped the client “truly understand how can we leverage the technology by bringing in the individual pieces that we need, and to create an environment where our security program and our security posture is constantly meeting a higher level of standard is looking at the frameworks and the governance models that have been put it into place in the world of cyber, whether it’s CIS, NIST, or a variety of different frameworks that help us understand what best practices and best of breed organizations are doing today. But, more importantly, how to measure our successes around those complex frameworks.”
According to Alexander, the client selected ISA because they were looking for a “true partner”. The client found that “adding ISA to the trilogy of this partnership has enabled them to have a local team that is always available to be able to assist them, coupled with the strength and knowledge and innovation that IBM brings to the forefront”.
The result? A “win, win, win” for the client, ISA, and IBM.
ISA has worked with IBM for over a decade, and our relationship continues to evolve as we demonstrate our knowledge, experience, and first-class support in implementing IBM’s applications. Visit ISA Cybersecurity to learn more, and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook.
IBM Think Summits are locally focused digital events where innovative thinkers gather to collaborate on solutions for recovery and transformation while engaging with the experts leading the way. These events deliver guidance, business and technical education for anyone who wants to enhance their IT resiliency, stabilize their operations and protect business continuity. IBM held over 30 live and virtual Think Summits worldwide in 2020.
IBM QRadar is an enterprise security information and event management (SIEM) product. It collects log data from an enterprise, its network devices, host assets and operating systems, applications, vulnerabilities, and user activities and behaviours.