Stöcklin Logistik AG

Uses Trend Micro to secure its critical communications and data worldwide

Overview

Since 1934, the Swiss Stöcklin Group has been supporting its customers as an experienced, international system integrator for intralogistics systems, from the planning and development phase through to delivery of complete turnkey systems in warehouse logistics and automated warehouse management.

The company offers conveying and storage systems for highly varying types of load carriers as well as floor handling equipment and industrial trucks and associated control software and warehouse management systems.

Assisted by around 500 employees in 14 branches around the world, Stöcklin Logistik AG is committed to delivering Swiss quality in global competition. It naturally maintains this standard in enterprise security as well, which also has to take the various particulars of the business into account.

Challenges

“A central challenge for the security team and the IT department lies in ensuring the availability and integrity of the large amounts of sensitive data—such as design data and intellectual property—while also providing secure communications”, says Christian Kühni, Head of IT.

It‘s not always been easy to find a satisfactory solution to this problem. There was no uniform enterprise-wide security strategy and each branch deployed its own mix of security products from different vendors. The downside was that each branch was responsible for keeping its products up to date. “Unfortunately we couldn‘t rely on updates, security levels or updated versions actually being implemented,“ reports Kühni. “Also, we kept on having issues with support requests because we weren‘t very familiar with the products being used. In a word, the overview of the state of security in the company revealed some deficiencies.“ This also precluded standardized reporting and alerting in case of incidents.

The need for better and more security has become more acute in light of even more frequent reports of new attack trends and hackingware/ransomware and phishing attacks. “We ultimately defined an enterprise-wide IT security strategy that ensures that the company and our customers are effectively protected against all manner of cyberattacks,“ explains Mr. Kühni.

"With Trend Micro Deep Discovery Inspector and Analyzer, combined with several sandboxes, we gained good insight into the network traffic and were able to determine where there might be weaknesses. With these results in hand, it was possible to define the further steps."

Christian Kühni
Head of IT, Stöcklin Logistik AG

Why Trend Micro

This strategy has been consistently implemented since early Fall 2018. Trend Micro proved to be the ideal partner for the defined requirements. "The employees in the consulting process were highly professional and addressed our needs very well," emphasizes the security expert. "The solutions perfectly meet our need for reliable, automated high-level protection that can be monitored centrally."

Solutions

The Trend Micro solutions are used holistically—on the network, for the servers, down to the clients, including complete email protection. First, a root cause analysis was conducted, with security experts from the logistics provider searching for vulnerabilities in the network and any leaks. They therefore implemented Trend Micro™ Deep Discovery Inspector™ and Trend Micro™ Deep Discovery™ Analyzer first. “The insight into the network traffic, combined with several sandboxes, delivered good results,“ emphasizes Mr. Kühni. With these results in hand, it was possible to define the further steps. At the same time, the Swiss company set up Trend Micro Deep Security™ solution with AV, IPS, and integrity monitoring modules as the new, centralized, and improved protection for physical and virtual enterprise servers.

Concurrently, Trend Micro™ Hosted Email Security™ with ScanMail™ for Exchange was implemented following analysis of the email traffic. Endpoint security is currently being addressed by setting up Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Complete.

"By using monitoring, we don’t just guess what’s happening. Rather, it shows us in all areas. We see where a threat is coming from and we can take action. We thus have much more power and control over our own security."

Christian Kühni
Head of IT, Stöcklin Logistik AG

Results

The Trend Micro products replaced all previous security products, as Stöcklin‘s IT experts determined that the new solutions met their requirements much more effectively than did the former, conventional solutions. This solved the problems with unreliable patches, for example. “The new centralized patch management gives us certainty that the servers everywhere are actually always up to date and that‘s very reassuring,“ emphasizes Mr. Kühni. Enterprise security also benefits from the virtual patching capability, as the intralogistics operators are using production systems that have to work 24/7 and are thus also protected by it. Monthly assessments by Trend Micro are also very helpful, as they use information obtained from the intelligent infrastructure Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ to go into greater detail than Stöcklin‘s in-house reports. “These values also help in blocking suspicious IP addresses,“ confirms the IT head.

Kühni highlights the benefits of Trend Micro Control Manager™ solution in particular: The tool not only facilitates operations as a whole but also offers an excellent, centralized overview of everything security-related going on in the entire company. “Monitoring is the critical difference from the past—we don‘t just guess what‘s going on, it‘s shown to us in all areas,“ states Mr. Kühni. And further, “We see where a threat is coming from and we can take action. We thus have much more power and control over our own security.“ The Trend Micro solution has already concretely demonstrated its value as a threat to the network was detected in time and averted.

Christian Kühni summarizes as follows: “We made the right choice with Trend Micro.“He also strongly advises, “Companies should always first analyze where they have the greatest risks and vulnerabilities in their network and infrastructure. Only then can they reasonably plan the next steps for better protection.“

What's Next?

Stöcklin made a great deal of progress in implementing the Trend Micro solutions at its major branches in Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Mexico, as the solutions have already gone live there. The other branches will follow in succession.