OVERVIEW
Established in 1905, Kobe Steel Co., Ltd. (KOBELCO) operates a wide range of businesses, including those focused on materials (steel, aluminum, advanced materials, and welding), machinery (covering industrial machinery, engineering, and construction equipment), and electric power generation. As a unified brand of the Kobe Steel Group, KOBELCO is composed of over 200 group companies.
To help further strengthen their supply chain security, KOBELCO has been integrating security tools across their group companies over the past 15 years. Their strategy integrates protection and response measures, which leverage the powerful capabilities and solutions within the Trend Vision One™ enterprise cybersecurity platform.
As a result of their longtime dedication towards proactive cybersecurity, KOBELCO has been awarded the 2024 Trend Global Customer Award.
“We are pleased that KOBELCO has received the Trend Global Customer Award,” says Nobumitsu Namba, Director of the IT Planning Department at KOBELCO. “To control cyber risks within the organization, it is necessary to consider both ‘protection activities’ to prevent cyberattacks in advance and ‘response activities’ to quickly address issues if they arise. Trend’s strategy of integrating these two points into a single platform aligns with the direction of Kobe Steel’s cybersecurity measures.”
By integrating cybersecurity into a single platform and monitoring the logs of the entire organization and understanding various security-related events, we can quickly detect and respond to threats that are difficult to notice individually, thereby strengthening the organization’s cybersecurity. We look forward to continuing to work with Trend to promote cybersecurity measures that support our business.
Nobumitsu Namba
Director of IT Planning Department, Kobe Steel Co., Ltd.
- Proactively secures 200+ in-group businesses
- Bolsters risk visibility and cross-layer protection
CHALLENGES
For KOBELCO and the businesses it operates, the utilization of IT—and the cybersecurity efforts that support it—are indispensable. “As a fundamental measure to improve cybersecurity across KOBELCO, we have been integrating security tools since around 2010,” says Namba. “This integration refers to unifying the products of different vendors used by group companies across the entire company. While integration is not the goal, we decided to integrate security tools to prevent cyberattack damage from occurring within group companies to prevent the spread of damage to other group companies in the event of an incident.”
In recent years, KOBELCO has strived to reduce number of security solutions used. “In the current environment where cyber risks lead to business risks, cybersecurity efforts are essential to support the utilization of IT,” says Namba. “While there is the concept of ‘best of breed’ using products from various vendors, this complicates operation makes appropriate cyber risk control difficult,”
We have been using Trend solutions at various points including for endpoints, email, network, and cloud, and we consider them sensors that provide a comprehensive view of KOBELCO’s overall cybersecurity. By utilizing these solutions and collaborating with Trend for 24/7 SOC monitoring, we believe we are contributing to KOBELCO’s top priority of ‘zero major incidents.
Nobumitsu Namba
Director of IT Planning Department, Kobe Steel Co., Ltd.
WHY TREND
“The main reason for adopting Trend’s solutions is that their strategy of integrating ‘protection’ and ‘response’ into a single platform aligns with the direction of KOBELCO’s cybersecurity measures,” Namba adds. “By integrating cybersecurity into a single platform and monitoring the logs of the entire organization and understanding various security-related events, we can quickly detect and respond to threats that are difficult to notice individually, thereby strengthening the organization’s cybersecurity. We look forward to continuing to work with Trend to promote cybersecurity measures that support our business.”
SOLUTION
KOBELCO’s cybersecurity efforts are designed for rapid prevention and response. “These efforts include the introduction of cybersecurity products, employee training, and 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) monitoring, implemented with a meticulous system,” says Namba.
Through Trend Vision One, KOBELCO leverages powerful proactive solution capabilities. These enable them to expand risk visibility, safeguard important endpoints, maintain optimal cloud security, and remain resilient amidst the everchanging threat landscape.
These solutions and capabilities are important to the group, particularly as they implement new technologies and processes. “By utilizing IT tools, we have reduced working hours by 250,000 per hour annually [2023 results], developed new materials using the data analysis platform DataLab®, promoted manufacturing innovation and safety improvement using advanced technologies such as IoT and robotics, and contributed to CO2 reduction with low-CO2 blast furnace steel using AI Furnace® technology. By combining the diverse assets of our group with digital technology and data, we provide new value to our customers.”
RESULTS
“We have been using Trend solutions at various points including for endpoints, email, network, and cloud, and we consider them sensors that provide a comprehensive view of KOBELCO’s overall cybersecurity,” notes Namba. “By utilizing these solutions and collaborating with Trend for 24/7 SOC monitoring, we believe we are contributing to KOBELCO’s top priority of ‘zero major incidents.’”
WHAT'S NEXT
Looking to the future, KOBELCO recognizes the importance of not only understanding and thoughtfully implementing AI, but also securing integrations against cyber risk. “Cybersecurity has been significantly changing with the advent of AI,” Namba says. “While we understand that using AI involves threats including compliance issues and AI misidentification, we believe that not using AI while cyber attackers are is a risk. We intend to utilize AI in the future for log monitoring, internal control, and other areas in cybersecurity.”
Solutions—and continued innovation—from Trend are poised to help KOBELCO safeguard their operations and employee data.” We expect Trend to continue leading in global cybersecurity,” Namba adds. “Additionally, we look forward to working together on new threats that are currently a concern, such as the misuse of deepfake cyberattacks on systems that constitute AI, and to promoting cybersecurity measures that support our business.”
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