Enhancing security and lowering costs in one go: arab national bank and Microsoft Security

As one of the largest banks in Saudi Arabia, The arab national bank (anb) strives to provide faster, simpler banking for commercial clients as well as consumers. The bank wanted to empower its employees to serve customers remotely through digitization, which required top-notch security. “We relied on a variety of third-party security solutions which required a lot of effort,” recounts Ala Asali, Chief Security Officer at anb. Now, with Microsoft Security as its overarching, tightly integrated security solution, anb has enhanced security operations, lowered costs, increased employee productivity with remote work and improved customer experience—with just one strategic move.

Founded in 1979, the arab national bank (anb) provides innovative, tailored financial solutions and fast, smooth service to customers in Saudi Arabia. In 2017, the bank started repositioning itself as a modern, innovative, digital bank. “Our main customer base was Baby Boomers, but we wanted to expand our services to target everyone. We realized that if you don’t exist digitally, you don’t exist at all,” recalls Ala Asali, Chief Security Officer at anb.

anb wanted to empower employees to serve customers from anywhere as part of its digitization. “But offering services remotely posed regulatory and security risks. So many things could go wrong,” explains Asali. “At the time, we relied on multiple disconnected third-party vendors for security. Our team needed to monitor various point solutions to put together a comprehensive security architecture. They also needed to interact with different vendors, which created an additional strain and inflated our costs.”

Integrated and cost-effective AI-based security platform

To enhance and streamline its security operations, anb chose Microsoft Security as its overarching security platform. With help from Microsoft partners Crayon and Paramount, anb deployed Microsoft solutions incrementally to eliminate any security gaps. “Microsoft E5 provides comprehensive coverage of network and app security, data security and governance, as well as privacy. This ensures that not only our security needs are met but that we are well positioned for the future as well,” adds Asali.

Natively integrated across the different security elements, Microsoft Security provides real-time visibility on the security environment. The solution also leverages cloud-based AI to protect, detect and remediate threats. “We have significantly reduced our operational costs and improved our security at the same time,” explains Asali. “If we ever have a data leak, we can find the source easily. If we relied on standalone security solutions, we would have left ourselves open to threats.”

“We have minimized our operational costs and improved our security at the same time.”

Ala Asali, Chief Security Officer, anb

To further enable efficient, secure remote work in the bank, anb’s next step was to integrate and secure productivity apps like Microsoft Teams. “In Microsoft Teams, we can detect and protect any sensitive data that our team members may inadvertently share,” explains Raed Al Dawood, Chief Technical Officer at anb. “We would never have been able to put such stringent security measures with a disconnected third-party communication solution.”

Collaborative workforce and improved customer experience

Now that Microsoft takes care of security anb’s employees can collaborate more efficiently. “We have a uniform way of doing things and we spend 90 percent less time on onboarding new technology. It takes us only one week to onboard thousands of devices. Previously, it would have been a nightmare to do and taken much longer.”

Enabling employees to work from anywhere has also made anb more productive. “Once we had a collaborative assignment that took 23 hours call with nearly 400 people,” shares Asali. “Because we’re all on Microsoft Teams, the meeting was held continuously without interruptions, enabling us to solve a very complex issue in a very short time, with relative ease.”

Increased work mobility also improved customer experience. “Our employees can visit our corporate customers, serve them on the spot, and leave them very impressed,” says Asali. “It has been an integral part of our business continuity that we can do business as usual from any location.”

The bank’s roadmap includes deploying more AI-powered solutions in the future. anb plans to prevent attacks with Microsoft Defender and analyze large data with Azure Sentinel. Extended detection and response (XDR) will provide protection across a wide range of products, including cloud applications, servers and emails. “In our industry, the only way for us to cut through the noise is to minimize threats with the least resources, and we will continue to rely on Microsoft for all-encompassing, top-of-the-line services to achieve our goal,” Asali concludes.