Fortune 1000 company avoids security disaster and undergoes digital transformation with Lightstream

Organization is Future-Proofed with Cloud Managed Services to Promote Financial, Security, Operational and Technological Health

Business Challenge

A Fortune 1000 company sought a digital transformation. A new chief marketing officer was hired, and the first order of business was to have a new website created. In order to save time, this rather large undertaking was outsourced to a third-party development agency instead of having the company’s internal IT department handle it. The multi-location developer expedited the design and construction of a new customer-facing website with a completely transformed customer interface.

Unfortunately, the development shop failed to communicate with the company’s internal IT team during the process of building the website. Two weeks before the site was scheduled to go live, the IT team performed an assessment and determined that live customer data had been transferred to the cloud without any security controls having been installed. The absence of security features made organizational assets and critical customer data vulnerable to attacks and theft. Frustrated and in need of skillful mitigation of this huge risk, the IT department quickly shut the site down and contacted Lightstream for help remedying the security breach.

Solution

The experts at Lightstream brought the two opposing parties together in order to discover exactly what was done. This all-in approach allowed them to devise a plan that everyone was on board with in order to make the application work within the company’s security environment.

Eight months later, the new website went live with strict security measures in place to protect customer and company data. While Lightstream was initially engaged to put out the fire of the unsecure website, the relationship grew and the provider now manages the company’s cloud environment. Their environment is optimized through Lightstream’s partnerships with Microsoft Azure and Palo Alto Networks, delivering consistent, automated protections with a variety of value-added resources. Moreover, the security, financial, technology and operational expertise offered by Lightstream’s Cloud Managed Services (CMS) solution is helping the manufacturer to improve the day-to-day administration and management of its cloud infrastructure.

Business Outcomes

The company now has a modern, customer-friendly website operating within a highly secure cloud environment. When new applications are desired, they can be implemented quickly and safely.

Previously, the company had its own data center which was fully managed by its internal IT department. Several months into the relationship with the web developer, huge inefficiencies were discovered which had caused the company’s invoice to increase by $40,000. With no security or financial controls in place, the company incurred significant budget and resource drains. Lightstream’s CMS now ensures that expensive mistakes like this will be avoided as cost variations will be detected early on.

Ongoing monitoring and monthly reports on the financial, security, operational and technological health of the environment provide full transparency to company executives. By exposing minor but frequently occurring inefficiencies, Lightstream consistently helps to keep costs down.

With its current cloud expenditures being nearly cost neutral, the company is looking to expand into Lightstream’s network services. A continuously growing depth and breadth of business-optimizing solutions ensures that Lightstream will be there to support the organization well into the future.

Customer Quote:

“In my 30 years in the technology industry, Lightstream has been one of the best partners I’ve ever worked with. Their ability to sit on the same side of the desk as us, partnering with us to develop customized solutions to our problems has been a game changer.”

— Director of IT at Fortune 1000 company