Background: Securing Critical Infrastructure in a Fragmented Landscape
As a global steel group, designated as national critical infrastructure, this prominent organization is responsible for protecting a complex network spanning numerous subsidiaries, diverse production facilities, and highly sensitive technical data. Any operational disruption—whether due to ransomware, data leakage, or insider threats—can trigger devastating cascading business, financial, and reputational damage. In this evolving threat landscape, traditional antivirus tools proved fundamentally inadequate. The group urgently needed a modern, proactive security solution capable of detecting threats legacy systems couldn’t and shifting from passive monitoring to active threat response across its entire global operation.
Unseen Threats, Fragmented Defense, and Operational Risk
Across its group companies, the organization faced mounting concerns:
- Advanced Threats Bypassing Antivirus: Existing security tools failed to detect unknown threats like fileless attacks, cryptominers, and ransomware variants. Endpoints were often silently compromised for months, consuming resources or quietly leaking data.
- Fragmented Security Operations Across Affiliates: With over 20,000 endpoints spread across several subsidiaries, each with separate IT teams, a unified view of threats was absent. Security was siloed, hindering coordinated defense.
- Group-Wide Data Protection: As a steel manufacturer, the group manages vast volumes of proprietary process data and production blueprints. Ensuring no internal misuse or unauthorized exfiltration went undetected was critical.
- Operational Continuity: Even minor endpoint issues could disrupt production. Security could never compromise performance or uptime.
Solution: Genians EDR – Group-Level Control, Real-Time Insight, and Seamless NAC Synergy
After evaluating multiple EDR solutions, the steel group chose Genian EDR, deploying it first at the holding company level and later expanding it to key affiliates. Today, over 20,000 endpoints are protected by this unified EDR platform. Genian EDR stood out by directly addressing core challenges and offering unique advantages through its deep integration with the group’s existing Genian NAC infrastructure.
Genians’ Differentiated Approach & Core Capabilities
- Unparalleled Threat Detection Beyond Antivirus: Genian EDR utilizes multi-layered detection engines—including machine learning, IOC matching, and behavior-based analytics (XBA) to monitor everything from initial infection vectors to post-execution activity. It detected ransomware-like behavior in real-time, well before encryption or propagation began—a feat no antivirus tool had achieved for them.
- Centralized Visibility Across All Subsidiaries: The group gained full visibility into every endpoint event across all companies and locations. The holding company’s security team can now monitor suspicious behavior, investigate alerts across subsidiaries, and enforce group-wide security policies from a single, consolidated dashboard.
- Real-Time Monitoring of Internal Risks: Genian EDR provided precise control over USB device activity, document movement, and unauthorized software use. It detected attempts to bypass media control policies and flag tools used to upload internal documents to the internet—real cases previously missed.
NAC & EDR Synergy: Unlocking Unified, Efficient Security
The seamless integration of Genian EDR with the group’s existing Genian NAC proved a decisive factor, delivering three critical benefits:
- Enhanced Wireless and Device Visibility: Genian NAC already provided foundational visibility into all wired and wireless devices across the network. EDR’s integration enriched this by adding deep endpoint security status, threat levels, and behavioral history, creating a truly comprehensive view of all connected assets.
- Unified User and Device Context: Leveraging NAC’s integration with HR databases and Active Directory, EDR-detected threats could be correlated with user and device identity information. This linked security events directly to “who” was involved and “what” device was compromised, vastly improving response accuracy and policy enforcement.
- Streamlined Deployment with Single Agent: Crucially, Genian EDR was deployed as a plugin to the existing Genian NAC agent. This eliminated the need for a separate agent installation, simplifying deployment across 20,000+ endpoints and minimizing operational overhead for individual affiliate IT teams. When EDR detected a threat, NAC’s policy engine could dynamically adjust network access, enabling immediate blocking or quarantine at the network level, preventing rapid threat propagation.
Summary: From Fragmented to Fortified Enterprise Security
Since deploying Genian EDR across its group, the global steel enterprise has observed significant improvements in endpoint security management and overall cybersecurity posture, reflecting both technological enhancements and operational efficiencies across affiliated companies.
Measurable Risk Reduction and Coordinated Operations
- Unified Endpoint Visibility Across Group Companies: A group-wide, centralized view of endpoint activity now helps identify issues—such as suspicious file executions or policy violations—across all subsidiaries, enabling proactive support.
- Improved Detection of Previously Missed Threats: EDR detected suspicious scripts, miner-type malware, and unauthorized tools that legacy antivirus solutions had missed, confirming the need for behavior-based detection.
- Enhanced Monitoring of Potential Insider Risk: By monitoring USB activity and unapproved communications, the group gained better insight into possible internal misuse, allowing quick response based on real-time alerts.
- Standardized Security Practices Across Affiliates: Genian EDR enabled consistent detection policies across over 20,000 endpoints, improving compliance and audit readiness despite a decentralized structure.
- Reduced Operational Risk Through Early Threat Response: Teams now respond to incidents within hours or minutes, not days or weeks. The ability to isolate endpoints, terminate processes, or investigate activity timelines has helped us limit the impact of potentially disruptive threats without needing to take entire systems offline.
For years, the group operated under a reactive, fragmented security model. But Genian EDR gave us the visibility, control, and confidence to transform how they protect our endpoints—and, by extension, their production lines, intellectual property, and reputation. Today, this global steel group stands stronger against advanced threats, leveraging a smarter, more robust, and unified group-wide security posture.
