By switching to XDR, Halcom, the leading Balkan e-banking solutions provider has increased the effectiveness of its defenses against intrusions, malware and risky employee behaviour.
- Increased detection based on heuristic search and detection methods and collaborative network investigation.
- Proactive protection that prevents risky user activity, detects new patterns of activity and automatically quarantines computers with detected risks.
- A silent transition without employees being aware or having impact on their day-to-day work and ability to use managed cyber security services.
Halcom is the region's leading company in e-banking and trusted digital commerce. The firm recently replaced its Kaspersky antivirus solution with Cynet 360 XDR.
"We mainly wanted to replace Kaspersky and realised there were other good aspects to this decision. After researching the market, the performance and the price of each solution, we decided on Cynet 360's XDR solution. This decision was also based on our prior cooperation with CREAPLUS in the field of secure digital signature solutions and trust services," said Gregor Pelhan, Director of Operations and Production at Halcom.
The challenge – the growing demands on cyber security
Driven by the need to improve their cyber security following the implementation of the European Cyber Security Directive NIS2, and by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, banks require higher levels of network security risk management from their suppliers. In addition to more powerful cyber protection, the company also wanted to be able to upgrade to an external security operations centre service.
"After researching the market, the performance and the price of each solution, we decided on the Cynet 360 XDR solution. This was also based on our prior cooperation with CREAplus in the field of secure digital signature solutions and trust services."
Gregor Pelhan, Director of Operations and Production, Halcom
"We wanted to take a step towards a more current solution that went further - including a possible move to managed threat detection and response services," said Borut Žnidar, Head of Information Security at Halcom.
The final decision was made only after the performance and responsiveness of the solution was verified by penetration testing carried out by an external ethical hacking specialist.
The solution - imperceptible deployment
As Nebojša Gajić, IT Systems Engineer Administrator at Halcom, and Deployment Manager for Cynet 360 XDR explained, the new environment was built in parallel to the existing one with a pilot group having been integrated into it first. In this way, they were able to discover what activities the new solution stopped unnecessarily thus ensuring that business processes ran in a safe and uninterrupted way.
"The entire transition to the new cyber protection has been completely silent; even though employees were using their computers continually and intensively, they had no idea when Cynet was installed on their devices," said Gajić.
As Gajić notes, the new solution is something completely different in terms of use. "The user doesn't even see Cynet and can't turn it off or remove it. Users try many work arounds and the biggest danger to the company are those who are not aware of the risks of doing so. Cynet makes users more secure in an unobtrusive way, because it does not affect the nature of working with the computer.
Halcom as a leading regional e-banking provider currently protects more than 200 IT assets, from servers to desktops and laptops. Key benefits include cloud operation, which enables continuous protection even when the endpoint or workstation is not located on the corporate network.
In addition, Cynet 360 responds perfectly as an XDR solution in situations where a dangerous threat would not have been detected by a conventional antivirus program.
Benefits - greater detection and proactive security
As Halcom notes, a higher volume of detections means more work than with the previous solution - mainly at the expense of proactivity. However, they have not yet decided to use managed threat detection and response services, as they have three teams available around the clock for this purpose.
"Action is needed based on all this information. The problem is that notifications are incomprehensible to someone who is not familiar with our activities. We are looking for some sensible combination with an external provider that manages the security operation, understands the detections in our systems correctly and integrates properly with our internal teams," explained Žnidar.
Using Cynet 360 XDR, Halcom currently protects more than 200 IT assets, from servers to desktops and laptops. Key benefits include cloud operation, which enables continuous protection even when the endpoint or workstation is not located on the corporate network.
"We previously employed a company antivirus server. If the user was not at a company location or connected via VPN, such risk information did not reach the centralised internal server. With Cynet, we now prevent an infected device from entering the corporate network because we detect risks even when user devices are not connected to the corporate network," said Gajić.
With Cynet 360, they gain greater proactive protection, which also allows them to avoid the need for IT teams to constantly monitor cyber protection status 24/7.
Among the key advantages revealed by Halcom during their deployment of Cynet 360 are the increased detection range based on heuristic search and detection methods and collaborative network investigation. Additionally, the new solution successfully prevents risky user activities, detects new patterns of activity and automatically quarantines computers with detected risks. With Cynet 360, they gain greater proactive protection, which also allows them to avoid the need for IT teams to constantly monitor cyber protection status 24/7. In addition, it can respond to as yet unverified malware code, which means they have a better chance of identifying zero-day attacks.
"I like Cynet. It doesn't give you a false sense of security, it just works. At the same time, it's like background policing, not letting you do whatever you want on your computer," Gajić pointed out.
Halcom therefore views Cynet 360 not only as an improved level of cyber protection, but also as a lever to guide users towards safe behaviour. Not only are risky activities immediately detected and halted, but also visible and highlighted.
