Sensitive financial information safe and secure

The client

Since its establishment in 2011, Széchenyi Funds has been the leading capital financing partner for domestic companies. Over the years, it has completed 120 investments and more than 40 exits. The company manages six funds with the aim of developing domestic companies and putting them on a long-term growth path.

The IT manager

IT Manager Árpád Péter has been involved in IT security for ten years. At Széchenyi Funds, he is the IT specialist responsible for the implementation of SOC and for increasing the IT security level.

The business problem

Széchenyi Funds, as a financial investor, handles a lot of sensitive business information. When evaluating potential investment targets, the organization receives confidential financial data, trade secrets, and data assets that need to be protected – all of which must be treated and protected confidentially. It was also important for them to create visibility into the IT solutions supporting their business processes. This way, they can always be aware of the level of IT security risk they are taking on, the potential threats and exposures.

The solution

We launched our Security Operations Center in 2019. Széchenyi Funds, as a long-term partner of Andrews, was one of the first to use the SOC service to resolve IT security issues. Thank you for your trust!

Quality information security requires three things: technical tools, which are the first line of defense. The second component is highly skilled IT professionals who protect customers’ processes with their expertise and experience. Thirdly, business processes that are thought through, defined and protected by IT security professionals.

Our company is an expert in all three of these areas, and we offer all of them as a service, bundled in the SOC, on a monthly fee model to our customers who value IT security.

The introduction

The first round of the rollout involved two days of log data collection and standard IT security risk detection and processing, monitoring 50-70 devices. This was followed by a fine-tuning process that took 3-4 months. During this period, customer-specific, individual processes were also analyzed from an IT security perspective and our experts developed alerts for these as well. For example, the opening of a database by an administrator, or the extraction of large amounts of data, or the sending of this data by email, is not a security event in itself. However, sequential processes can pose a serious risk of data leakage.

By the end of the fine-tuning process and by understanding individual customer processes, the number of false positive alerts has been drastically reduced. Sufficient attention and expertise is devoted to the analysis and management of important alerts. The Széchenyi Funds can really focus on its business, knowing that IT security is in expert hands.

There is also an added benefit to the Andrews Security Operations Center service. After an in-depth understanding of individual business processes, our experts were able to recommend customized solutions that enhance the client’s security levels. Based on objectively collected log data, our IT professionals can provide professionally supported advice on whether you need a web traffic filtering tool or an identity management solution, for instance.

According to Árpád Péter, Head of IT at Széchenyi Funds, any investment in IT security is maximized and serves the client’s business objectives. This helps to exclude from procurement those vendors where strong marketing prevails. IT security solutions that support business processes have made all network activities transparent, so Széchenyi Funds is always aware of potential risks.

“I have seen that Andrews’ professionals have built the services we need from the bottom up, based on our needs and usage, so I am sure that we have not spent a single extra Forint on a service that we thought was necessary due to strong marketing,” concluded Árpád Péter.