How Private Cloud Security is Used by Regions Bank, Western Canada Lottery, Hill Country Tech Guys, Reliance, and the City of Houston: Case Studies

Private cloud solutions offer increased security because control over configuration and management is handled in house or by a trusted managed provider. Though it often comes with increased costs, more responsibility, and less flexibility, private clouds are best suited to storing and processing sensitive data.

The following five case studies show how various organizations across different industries are embracing the strengths of private cloud security:

1. Reliance acsn

As IT security specialists, Reliance acsn needs to continually monitor and enhance the services being delivered to their customers. When their existing IT infrastructure had grown to include a wide selection of devices running all manner of software and located in a variety of locations, it was clear Reliance acsn needed to make changes.

Concerned that public cloud solutions were too unpredictable, Reliance acsn decided to work with Nutanix to configure a private cloud platform that allowed for two data centers, facilitating backup and disaster recovery resilience.

Nutanix was a natural choice, given their zero-trust security design philosophy that assumes any network, application, server, or user is at risk.

With Nutanix, Reliance acsn can access continuous security auditing, real-time reporting, and vulnerability remediation; ensure compliance with regulatory mandates; configure identity and access management; assess and test pending software upgrades and patches; and prevent malware and ransomware, all while always taking a proactive approach to preventing security threats and breaches.

Industry: IT security management

Private Cloud Security Solution: Nutanix Private Cloud Platform

Outcomes:

• Single management interface has reduced operational overhead
• On-demand scalability
• Regulatory compliance is assured
• Costs can be easily predicted

2. Regions Bank

Operated by the Regions Financial Corporation, Regions Bank is one of the United State’s largest full-service banking and wealth management products and services providers. Regions operates over 1,300 banking offices and 2,000 ATMs across the South, Midwest, and Texas.

With a fragmented and decentralized IT infrastructure, Regions Bank was looking for a new solution that would bring everything together under a single security model. Combined with the need to provide access to data through various systems and interfaces and the desire to leverage analytics to better service their client’s, Regions Bank turned to Cloudera’s CDP Private Cloud Base.

Choosing Cloudera’s private cloud solution was based on a number of critical requirements. It can:

• Detect and prevent fraud at both account and transaction levels
• Provide consistent security and governance
• Ensure the right users have access to the right data, the right way, and at the right time
• Provision isolated workloads, allowing for future leverage of hybrid cloud architecture possibilities

“The result has been trusted analytical solutions that help reduce risk, detect fraud, assist commercial relationship managers and private wealth advisors, and provide insights into consumers, so we can better meet their needs,” noted Manav Misra, chief data and analytics officer at Regions Bank.

Industry: Financial services

Private Cloud Security Solution: Cloudera CDP Private Cloud Base

Outcomes:

• Decreased fraud alerts by 30%
• 50% reduction in average daily dollar loss
• $10 million USD per year retention savings
• Estimated 10% cloud cost savings
• Launch of new data products has been streamlined

3. Western Canada Lottery Corporation

Western Canada Lottery Corporation (WCLC) is a fundraising partner for Canadian provincial governments, with the goal of delivering money back to fund public programs that benefit local populations. With the mandate to operate and monitor lottery and gaming activities, maintaining data integrity and security are non-negotiable.

When the existing IT infrastructure WCLC had in place wasn’t adequate, the organization turned to HPE GreenLake’s private cloud platform. High-availability is always a concern when thousands of players are invested in lottery and gaming activities, but nothing underscored the need for a secure environment that would protect game data and player information.

Having their infrastructure on-premises was a tremendous comfort to WCLC, with HPE ensuring the redundancy for 100% uptime was in place alongside the requisite tools to provide full visibility on how systems are performing while alerting to any possible security threats.

With HPE GreenLake’s Private Cloud Platform, “the entire organization knows IT has the necessary securities, control, and management in place,” explained Michelle Valentine, solution architect for WCLC.

Industry: Sports and entertainment

Private Cloud Security Solution: HPE GreenLake Private Cloud Platform

Outcomes:

• Funding predictability for public programs has increased
• Supports over 400% online demand growth and speeds turnaround with 3x performance
• Private data and operations are protected

4. Hill Country Tech Guys

Hill Country Tech Guys (HCTG) is an established IT managed service provider (MSP) located in Texas. With a client roster that boasts over 100 healthcare organizations and businesses, critical considerations for HCTG include comprehensive security measures, data privacy, and certification with industry regulatory compliance.

After learning Otava was the first hosting provider in the U.S. to meet Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance standards, HCTG chose to adopt their private cloud services.

Otava’s security solutions portfolio includes daily log review, file integrity monitoring, a web application firewall, multi-factor authentication (MFA), vulnerability scanning, patch management, antivirus scanning, encryption options, and ransomware protection. They also take physical security seriously with environmental controls like 24/7 monitoring, logged surveillance cameras, and multiple alarm systems.

Industry: IT managed service provider

Private Cloud Security Solution: Otava Private Cloud Services

Outcomes:

• Secure and reliable hosting for client’s critical systems and workloads
• Migration of client’s workloads is significantly faster and easier
• Pricing is predictable and straightforward with no need for costly, up-front investment in infrastructure

5. City of Houston

As one of the United State’s largest cities, the City of Houston is obligated to provide responsive and reliable services and support to their citizens. Included among that population are over 22,000 employees working in a wide variety of locations around the clock.

The burden of the City of Houston’s responsibilities weighed heavy, whether supporting first responders in emergency situations, providing healthcare, delivering justice through the municipal court, or ensuring thousands of area children are fed through a vital summer food program.

Addressing these responsibilities was made easier with the implementation of a NetApp private cloud.

By running NetApp ONTAP, the City of Houston is enjoying security benefits that include:

• Autonomous ransomware protection that detects anomalies in real time and provides administrator alerts
• Point-in-time, read-only copies of data that offer backups that aren’t vulnerable to ransomware infections
• Highly configurable access control with full visibility and behavioral analytics
• Data encryption choices
• Cryptography products and solutions
• File system auditing
• Protection against brute force attacks
• MFA
• Role-based access control
• Antivirus
• Disk sanitization

Industry: Government

Private Cloud Security Solution: NetApp Solution Powered Private Cloud

Outcomes:

• Saved $1 million by consolidating seven pre-existing data centers into a single facility
• Vital city services are kept operating in all situations
• Court processes are streamlined with increased revenue and collections
• Reduced burden on emergency rooms and ambulances
• Tax dollars are able to stretch further