Prosegur boosts security, eases management of servers at scale with Azure Arc

High security for companies, customers

In a world of uncertainty, Prosegur helps bring peace of mind to its customers. The security company offers residential and commercial alarms, cash management for financial institutions, and high-tech security services. Based in Spain, it operates in 26 countries with datacenters in Spain, Brazil, Argentina, the United States, and Australia.

Founded in 1976, the company has grown significantly, often through acquisitions, and as a result it has absorbed a variety of IT practices from other companies. Director of Technology and Systems at Prosegur, Iñigo Martinez Lasala is in charge of managing the IT infrastructure decisions across all those countries and lines of business. “I need to be able to control all the infrastructure from where I am in Spain, even though we have employees and customers all over the world,” says Martinez Lasala. “We required a single point of view of all of our infrastructure, because it’s too hard to manage if not centralized.”

In addition to its on-premises environment, Prosegur also runs workloads in Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. With multiple cloud platforms, it was difficult to manage and secure data in a consistent way. Continues Martinez Lasala, “The tools and processes are different for each cloud. My team has to control all of these applications for the specific clouds, and it’s very time-consuming for them to learn everything.”

Improved management at scale

After evaluating its options, Prosegur conducted a proof of concept (POC) using Microsoft Azure Arc to help manage the company’s hybrid, multicloud environment. Martinez Lasala spearheaded the POC, and it ran very smoothly. ”We selected Azure Arc to manage our servers because it has the capability to cover all of the scenarios that we deal with on-premises and also with other clouds,” he says. “We haven’t found this capability with any other solution. There are several reasons why we can’t move all our workloads to the cloud, such as regulatory requirements in different geographies. We have the flexibility in Azure Arc to manage on-premises infrastructure similarly to the cloud in terms of updating security, performance, and log analytics in our web-based console.”

Prosegur started by adding an impressive number of servers—more than 700—from on-premises datacenters to Azure Arc. In the future, it will add the servers it currently has in Google Cloud. The company’s goal is to eventually move 5,000 servers, which consist of 3,500 Windows servers and 1,500 Linux servers. Thanks to Azure Arc, Prosegur can scale such a large number of servers confidently and in a highly secure manner.

“It’s always top of mind for us to keep our data and customer data secure,” says Martinez Lasala. “Using Azure Arc, we were able to scale and ensure higher security by providing a centralized way to update servers to enable antivirus endpoint detection and response and other capabilities. Otherwise, we would have needed to use multiple third-party tools.”

Increased security and visibility

The company now has more visibility into its security, and it scans for vulnerabilities using Azure Defender. “The choice made sense to us because Azure Defender connects so tightly and automatically to Azure Arc,” says Martinez Lasala. “There are other tools out there, but Azure Defender provides additional functionality that other tools don’t have, such as establishing rules of compliance, hardening servers, and launching scripts to fix server issues.” 

To further ease management of its hybrid environment and improve its overall security posture, Prosegur also uses Microsoft Azure Security Center and Microsoft Azure Monitor, plus Microsoft Azure Automation for patch management. Continues Martinez Lasala, “We could find these capabilities with multiple independent tools, but they do not work together seamlessly the way they do with Microsoft solutions.”

Saved time, decreased costs

Not only has Prosegur increased scalability and security, but the company is also saving its IT team significant time by providing the ability to monitor infrastructure from a single pane of glass. “By using a single tool to rule our fleet of servers, we reduce the amount of time to learn and to use multiple third-party tools,” says Martinez Lasala. “We gain a lot of efficiency inside our technical areas. By adopting Azure Arc, we decrease our standard maintenance tasks, save employees time by minimizing manual tasks, and increase the capability of our technical staff.” 

Part of the time savings is due to faster Linux patching, In the past, Prosegur needed to create specific scripts to cover the servers sequentially, which took a lot of manual effort. “By using Azure Arc, we estimate that we’ll save about 10 times the effort—and 10 times the cost—to patch and deploy any kind of hardening in Linux servers in comparison with the previous manual method,” says Martinez Lasala. “With Azure Arc, it’s much faster and easier.”

Concludes Martinez Lasala, “We were always challenged with consistent management before. Now with Azure Arc and our ecosystem of Microsoft security solutions, we have a common layer to manage our infrastructure globally without thinking about which tool to use for a specific task in a specific datacenter. We’re equipped to manage any issues that arise in the future.” 

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