Webcor

Prioritizing safety on-site and online

Safety is the foundation of everything that Webcor builds, from employee health and safety on the construction site to enterprise data security. Allen Woolley, Director of Operations for IT at Webcor, explained, “It is critical that everybody be able to work safely and securely at Webcor. From the cyber side of the house, I want my data secure, I want my connections secure and I want appropriate access levels to sensitive data to ensure the data is controlled, managed and accessed in a secure manner.”

Today, the impact of cybercrime on the global economy is expected to cost trillions, but many organizations lack the internal resources to launch an adequate defense against cyberattacks. With a small IT department, Webcor knew it needed managed security expertise to investigate potential threats across its many technology endpoints and devices, including laptops, desktops and servers. The company turned to OpenText™ Security Services to augment the Webcor staff with security professionals.

Taking a proactive approach to risk mitigation

Building on the success of this initial solution, Webcor expanded the scope of its engagement with OpenText to include a full security risk assessment. The OpenText Professional Services team helped evaluate Webcor’s current security posture, processes and procedures to develop a robust security plan that included a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform. OpenText Security Services provided a managed detection and response service for Webcor. These services replaced the need for an SOC Analyst by providing high-level resources.

To date, Webcor has seen valuable benefits from the initial threat-hunting solution, which includes monitoring endpoints and servers to look for and address suspicious activity. The outsourced services decreased IT staff workload and increased the skillset available for security investigations. In addition, the threat-hunting service has resulted in crucial improvements to the overall security defenses of Webcor’s software, hardware and networks, increasing its ability to react to security events in real time.

Woolley explained, “The OpenText threat-hunting service was extremely effective. We isolated real-world threats and remediated them. We have full visibility into what those issues were and the root cause. More importantly for me, with the help of OpenText, we used that as a springboard into developing a security plan and an architecture to prevent, detect and remediate any future threats that may get into our infrastructure.”

Leveraging expertise to enable success

OpenText Security Services, which provides consulting and advisory services, managed services and learning services for OpenText Security solutions, played a key role in helping Webcor take data security to the next level.

“We gave OpenText direct access to our infrastructure so they could do a deep-dive analysis on logs and events and then provide a set of recommended actions to take. That worked very well,” said Woolley.

Cyber resilience during a global crisis

When it came to weathering the remote workforce challenges of Covid-19, Webcor was better positioned than most.

Woolley reported, “We were actually well-placed when the Covid pandemic hit because of the way we architected our infrastructure with OpenText. We had the connectivity and the security already set up. We also built visibility through the SIEM solution, which greatly enhanced our security posture here at Webcor.”

Looking ahead, Webcor is planning on continued collaboration with OpenText, including IT governance improvements, managed security services and continued threat-hunting services.