ICL Services and UserGate safeguarded the local IT infrastructure of a prominent international car manufacturer

The project's client is the Russian division of a major international car manufacturer. Traditionally, its entire IT infrastructure used to be integrated into European data centers and supported by international service providers. However, amid geopolitical changes and a crisis in the market, the global headquarters decided to disconnect the Russian division from its central infrastructure.

The client needed to promptly secure a DMZ segment that was previously operating on equipment from a foreign vendor, which was no longer supported. The management server was set up in Europe and controlled by the headquarters. Due to these restrictions, businesses in Russia were cut off from the defense system service.

The local office management was tasked with creating an IT infrastructure protection system that meets regulatory requirements, combines high reliability and performance, flexibility, ease of configuration, and independence from foreign technologies and suppliers.

"We were faced with a complex task — to ensure business process stability in new circumstances, i.e., maintaining interaction with headquarters and using corporate systems and applications while complying with Russian legislation for reliable data protection," says Ivan Sychev, Senior Engineer for Automated Production Management Systems at ICL Services. "For us, it's crucial to have a highly reliable and fast solution that can be integrated with all company services, so we relied on market leaders and their experience in developing and implementing relevant products when choosing a supplier and integrator."

"Initially, the client had NGFW in the network structure, but the management server was located outside of Russia. The vendor could refuse to provide technical support for firewalls and licenses at any time. Deploying a new management server and continuing to work with these firewalls posed a significant risk for the company. The primary task was to implement a new NGFW solution and integrate it with all services of the client's company. Our team set up and configured one cluster for the internal network and another for the bank network. We separated the banking sector into another cluster for resilience and security. Simultaneously, Proxy with authentication, SSL Reverse Proxy was configured and adapted for the client, and the client's internal applications were securely published online. For security purposes, the team arranged for firewall logs to be transferred to Logstash for security incident analysis and detection. For the client's banking products, we assisted in passing an audit to comply with the banking system regulator's requirements. The FSTEC-certified UserGate solution not only demonstrated compliance with all regulatory requirements, including those of the banking system, but also its reliability, speed, and ability to be flexibly and conveniently customized to meet the client's needs," says Ivan Sychev.

"Many companies found themselves in a situation where global developers of network IS solutions exited Russia, leaving their clients without updates and technical support, forcing them to rapidly reconstruct their own IT infrastructure to ensure business continuity. The security of corporate and client data cannot be compromised, so we are prepared to offer organizations in such situations the opportunity to bring them under our protection. More than 13 years of developing our own information security technologies, reliable and experienced partners who have carried out over 5000 implementations, give us every reason to claim our leadership in the NGFW segment and our ability to ensure the reliable and uninterrupted operation of our clients' digital infrastructure, regardless of their size and kind of business," says Andrey Duyun, UserGate Partner Manager.

Implementing UserGate solutions enables organizations to significantly enhance network security, protect the network from malicious attacks and unwanted content, organize access control, and optimize network resource usage.

Also read on the UserGate website.