Emaar Technologies - ArcSight

Emaar TechnologiesHP Enterprise Security Customer Case Study“ArcSight ESM brings an unmistakable value to ourbusiness: complete visibility, fast identification of rootcauses, and effective regulation of IT resources. It alladds up to sound, secure business management.”—Muzamil Abdulkarim, General Manager, Managed Services andInfrastructure Operations, Emaar TechnologiesCustomer BriefEmaar Properties, a Dubai-based public joint stockcompany, is a pioneer of innovative communitylivingconcepts and is the prime mover of theEmirate’s real estate and construction sector. Thecompany has a collective presence in severalmarkets spanning the Middle East, North Africa,Pan-Asia, Europe and North America.HP Enterprise SecurityCustomer Case Study:Emaar Technologiesmanages a large,complex infrastructureencompassing multiplevertical markets. Itneeded a centralizedenterprise threat andrisk management(ETRM) platformsolution.Industry: MSSPEmaar Technologies is the sole IT service providerfor the complete group of Emaar. The organizationprovides infrastructure, security, network, softwaredevelopment and ERP solutions, and governs allbusiness units – healthcare, hospitality, educationand finance. Emaar Technologies serves 8,000employees and customers enterprise-wide.Product(s)• ArcSight ESMBusiness Benefits• The time to identify security breaches and takecorrective action is very fast with ArcSight ESM– just 5-6 minutes, compared to up to two dayspreviously• ArcSight ESM shows Emaar Technologies realtimesecurity events from their relevant sourcesand enables IT staff to generate meaningfulreports to the business, IT management and IS/IT operations• With ArcSight ESM, Emaar Technologies has notneeded to hire additional resources to overseesecurity operations• ArcSight ESM enables Emaar to achieve sound,secure business management and is helpingthe company to become the leading managingsecurity provider in the regionThe Emaar ChallengeEmaar Technologies manages a large, complexinfrastructure but did not have an effective means tomonitor its critical systems, including ERP, firewalls,network devices, applications and databases. A majorpotential problem was lurking within the business: in theevent of a cyberattack or activities by a misguidedsystems administrator, Emaar would not know about itand therefore, could not react in time to prevent seriousbusiness disruption. A simple change in an ERP systemdatabase would sometimes cause a public-facing serviceto go down, resulting in a loss of revenue. Meanwhile,since the security team would be caught by surprise, theproblem would take a long time to remedy. Obviously,this situation was unacceptable to Emaar – from bottomline, productivity and reputation standpoints.With nearly 80 critical systems and thousands ofcomponents to manage across different companies andindustries, Emaar Technologies needed a centralizedenterprise threat and risk management (ETRM) platformfor complete infrastructure visibility. The company beganevaluating solutions with three main criteria in mind:

centralized security management and health checkcapabilities; centralized analysis and correlation ofsecurity events; and, prompt remediation of anyidentified problems. ArcSight ESM stood out as the clearwinner.The ArcSight SolutionArcSight ESM provides Emaar Technologies with a singlemanagement platform that monitors all security eventsacross the organization and uses powerful correlationand analysis to identify both external cyberthreats andproblematic insider activity. “ArcSight ESM shows usreal-time security events from our relevant sources,” saysMuzamil Abdulkarim, General Manager of ManagedServices and Infrastructure Operations at EmaarTechnologies. “Configuring the correlation of events isvery easy, and we now receive real-time alerts andreports that are useful for IT staff as well asmanagement.”Emaar Technologies has discovered that the time toidentify security breaches and take corrective action isvery fast with ArcSight ESM compared to other solutions.It evaluated products from other competing vendors, butfound them very difficult to configure and use. “Thecapabilities and features were not up to the mark,support was not right, and the reports we were gettingwere not giving any value to the business and to the ITdepartment,” says Abdulkarim. “Both products were veryweak compared to ArcSight ESM.”ComGuard, an ArcSight partner in the region, providedlocal support and contributed significantly to the successof the ArcSight ESM implementation. “They really havedone a great job assisting us with sorting out the optionsand honing in on what would be an excellent solutionfor us,” says Abdulkarim.The ArcSight ImpactWith ArcSight ESM, Emaar Technologies spends lesstime identifying the root cause of security issues. “Within5-6 minutes we are able to identify the problem andstart acting on it, which is excellent. Before, it took hours,and sometimes, up to two days,” says Abdulkarim.That time savings contributes to a real a money-saver forthe department. IT staff is no longer focused on theimpractical task of manual log monitoring andcorrelation, which was getting out of control. And, theprospect of outsourcing the task has become a non-issue;thanks to ArcSight ESM, Emaar Technologies has notneeded to hire additional resources to oversee securityoperations.The Emaar Technologies IT staff is now chartered withmore strategic analysis, and can generate reportsmeaningful to the business, IT management and IS/IToperations. Particularly beneficial reports for EmaarTechnologies show failed logins, policy violations,database monitoring and unauthorized applicationaccess. Emaar has numerous VPN users, so they keeptrack of who’s using what tool. “Using ArcSight ESM isvery easy, and the reporting capability is amazing,”says Abdulkarim. “We can generate a variety of realtimeand historical reports relevant to our business in justseconds.”With ArcSight ESM, Emaar Technologies has completevisibility of their network and can see any anomalousactivity occurring across the enterprise. Now, when adatabase is modified, the IT staff is alerted immediately.With the visibility ArcSight ESM provides, EmaarTechnologies also has the ability to effectively reconcileIT resources. Many times there are resources out on thenetwork that are rarely or never used, and the judiciousability to shut them down improves the regulation of thebusiness. “ArcSight ESM brings an unmistakable value toour business: complete visibility, fast identification of rootcauses, and effective regulation of IT resources,” saysAbdulkarim. “It all adds up to sound, secure businessmanagement.”Looking into the future, Abdulkarim is excited about thepossibilities. “With ArcSight ESM, we are aggressivelycovering our current business units and will be able toeasily extend the solution to include new entities inprivate and public sectors in Dubai,” he says. “Webelieve ArcSight ESM will actually help us to become theleading managing security provider in the region.”© Copyright 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warrantiesfor HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should beconstrued as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.All other product and company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.ESP-CCS028-081601-03, Created November 2011