BLP Bank

VISUAL Security Suite

The 43-year old Argentine BLP Bank (Banco de La Pampa) is an institution that contributes daily to the regional economic development. With its innovative and high quality financial services, it has branches in several provinces of Argentina, including Neuquén, Río Negro, Córdoba and Buenos Aires. The bank's IT Security directly affects the main office in Santa Rosa and all the branch offices' multiplatform environments encompassing iSeries, Windows, Linux, and Cisco systems, and SQL Server databases.

The banks' Security Department faced the need to improve IT Security controls and policies for the large volume of events and printed reports that they must review manually on a daily basis.

The Solution
The bank chose Tango/04's VISUAL Security Suite to develop a complete IT Security project that would also offer multiplatform monitoring capabilities. Crucial to the decision was the modular and scalable architecture of the solution, and the local technical support. “Tango/04's human capital, the support we received and the successful Proof of Concept were also deciding factors,” says Favio Moneo, head of security at the bank.

The bank chose Tango/04's VISUAL Security Suite to develop a complete IT Security project that would also offer multiplatform monitoring capabilities.

The bank achieved its goals of strictly controlling compliance with IT security policies, with the help of Tango04's solutions, which centrally monitor, in real time and using a single control panel, its different platforms and databases. With Tango04, in the event of a violation of any of its IT Security policies, BLP Bank immediately knows the event that caused it.

The Security Department no longer needs to search through multiple lists of events, thereby saving time and reducing problems. “The daily task of checking list for list, which used to take 4 hours a day, today is completed in only 10 or 15 minutes. VISUAL Security Suite liberates us from these tedious tasks and allows us to invest this time in more important work. In addition, we are now alerted to everything instantly; we no longer discover a problem a day later, when it is already too late to do anything about it,” explains Moneo.

VISUAL Security Suite informs in real time by email or text message if someone accesses or changes a sensitive file that is being audited, identifying who accessed the file and what change was made. “For example, we permanently monitor the salary list of the bank. If anyone tries to read it, we will know in real time who it is. We also receive alerts when new users are created that were not officially requested, or if special attributes are given without authorization” says Moneo.

Knowing in real time helps in decision making. “Today we can react instantly. It is a vital tool. Before we would discover suspicious changes days or even weeks after the event took place. Now we detect these changes immediately, and receive a BEFORE and AFTER view of the change” he continues.

Internal and External Audits

Like any banking institution, BLP Bank must meet rigorous measures of control to demonstrate and maintain compliance with current standards. To this end the bank must pass a series of specially designed audits.

First of all, the bank carries out an internal audit, which continuously checks the effectiveness of its security policy. In addition, the bank contracts PriceWaterHouseCoopers to carry out an annual internal audit of its systems, which audits a predefined cycle of checks and offers a final evaluation. Finally, Ernst & Young carries out the obligatory external audit, which reviews specific security issues.

The Argentine Central Bank is the last controlling entity. Generally the Central Bank calls once a year, complemented with follow-up visits. “One of the points for maintaining or improving the qualifications issued by the Central Bank is the use of proactive monitoring software,” says Moneo. The Central Bank asks us for a list of all parameters of all the operating systems we use and indicates potential risks.

“All our auditors congratulated us on our monitoring tool. They were impressed with the controls that we implemented,” signals Moneo.

The bank's Security Department uses VISUAL Security Suite alarms to generate warnings by email or SMS and to prepare a daily report of the incidents and the solutions applied to resolve them. “The last time the auditors came, they asked to see the lists and we had them ready in anticipation,” relates Moneo. “When the Central Bank saw that we had begun to implement the solution in our iSeries environment, they said they were pleased with our initiatives and to keep it up. We continued to advance and now we have the solution implemented for our Windows, Linux, and Cisco systems and SQL Server databases too.”

“Today we can react instantly. It is a vital tool. Before we would discover suspicious changes days or even weeks after the event took place. Now we detect these changes immediately, and receive a BEFORE and AFTER view of the change”

Mission Accomplished

Today BLP Bank assures achievement of its rigorous IT Security policies as they can quickly determine the cause and origin of a security issue using the advanced event correlation functions of Tango/04 VISUAL Security Suite. This empowers the bank to act proactively and count on all information relevant to the decision making process. As a result the Security Department has been able to increase productivity.

“It gives us more time to dedicate ourselves to other issues. Before we had 2 or 3 people doing the work that today is carried out by the software in 15 minutes,” concludes Moneo. “With this solution we monitor only that which is out of the ordinary. Today we only check what is relevant among the many events. This helps significantly reduce time. And in contrast to other tools on the market, it does all this without affecting the performance of the systems”.

Continuous Growth

“Every day we get more out of the acquired solution. It started as a security tool and is transcending the purely technological elements. The Operations area of the
bank is buying additional modules of the solution,” explains Moneo.

This shows the scalability of VISUAL Security Suite and its ability to grow with BLP Bank, as a result of its modular structure and extraordinary ease of use. At the same time it proves that you can manage security projects as well as operations projects with the same tool.

The image of the bank improves day by day with the use of VISUAL Security Suite. “For us it is a fundamental tool. Just as much as we need to have up to date anti-virus software, we count on Tango/04 solutions every day,” concludes Moneo.

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