Covinoc Implements End-to-End Data Security and Frees Up Teams for Strategic Innovation

“Everyone wins. Our internal users rarely see spam and can work securely from anywhere. Our engineers spend far less time solving endpoint problems. And our affiliates know that their services are always available, safe, and encrypted.”

– Edwin Perez, Technology Manager, Covinoc

Overview

Covinoc is a financial services company headquartered in Bogota, Colombia. Working with strategic partners, investors, corporations, and investment banks, Covinoc provides debt servicing, collection, and management services. The company focuses on helping its customers repay debt and regain financial balance so that they can reestablish their dreams and pursue their life goals on a sound footing. Covinoc’s specialized collection logistics platform enables it to meet a wide range of client needs across diverse economic sectors.

Business Challenges

Fighting New Threats
Financial data is Covinoc’s most precious—and sensitive—asset. The company routinely handles large volumes of privileged business data, portfolio data, proprietary statistical analysis, and personally identifiable information (PII) for affiliates and customers. From telephone negotiations and payment agreements to follow-up electronic communications, keeping this information secure is critical.

The pandemic challenged security measures for every company, but cyber security attacks hit Colombian financial services companies especially hard. Ransomware and phishing attacks escalated, targeting companies and individuals. In 2020, cyber fraud increased 60% over the previous year. Although Covinoc had existing firewall security, they needed to up their game for protection from a higher level of attacks.

Almost overnight, employees moved from working in the office to working from home. This resulted in “alternancia”—having to quickly create alternative connectivity and security to support significant changes in employee work patterns and locations. Employees now needed to take laptops from one place to another, increasing the risk of devices—and critical data—being stolen, lost, or damaged. Email volumes reached two million messages per month with 60% of them being spam and potential phishing threats.

“During this time, our engineers were spending most of their time solving problems,” said Edwin Perez, Technology Manager at Covinoc. “They were continuously helping users, fixing accounts, and fighting email threats—even sleeping in the data center on weekends.”

Solution

End-to-End Data Protection
Urgency to maintain data safety launched an in-depth analysis of Covinoc’s security measures. The team added internal firewalls to enhance data center protection and endpoint security to secure all laptops. After evaluating several potential solutions, Covinoc chose Check Point Quantum Network Security Gateways and Check Point Harmony Endpoint Protection.

“Right away, Quantum Security Gateways were a huge help,” said Perez. “Fast deployment optimized our resources and security performance. Comprehensive Check Point R80 Security Management gave our team a centralized, easy way to manage everything.”

Quantum Security Gateways were deployed in all Covinoc data centers for their high threat prevention performance. Quantum SandBlast Zero-Day protection (sandboxing) prevents sophisticated, fifth-generation cyber attacks with a cloud-based virtual sandbox that detects zero-day malware in real-time. Included in the solution is Threat Extraction, a Content Disarm & Reconstruction (CDR) technology that removes active content from files, reconstructs them, and then delivers only safe, sanitized content to users. Defense in-depth is provided with integrated application control, URL filtering, IPS (Intrusion Prevention System), antivirus, and anti-bot.

“Quantum also provides us with HTTPS inspection capabilities,” said Perez. “They filter high volumes of information for better protection against threats that try to hide through encryption. Even though we had proxies before, the HTTPS inspection significantly improved traffic navigation and flow.”

Quantum firewalls protect internal data center servers from malicious attacks coming from the Internet with inbound HTTPS inspection. Outbound HTTPS inspection safeguards internal users from malicious attacks that originate from the Internet.

Covinoc migrated all endpoint security to Check Point Harmony Endpoint. Now, endpoints are protected against the latest threats such as ransomware, phishing, and file-less attacks. Users are protected with instant, complete remediation—even when laptops are offline. Autonomous detection and response automates 90% of attack detection, investigation, and remediation. Covinoc also takes advantage of Harmony Endpoint Full Disk Encryption as well as integrated endpoint threat prevention technologies such as sandboxing, and CDR for complete protection in a single solution.

“An unexpected benefit of implementing Check Point was the ease of use,” said Perez. “Even though they’d never used Check Point before, our engineers quickly implemented the solutions and felt confident using them. They wouldn’t change for anything.”

Benefits

Data Security with High Performance
Having a leading-edge security protection solution is critical for the Covinoc organization. For the Covinoc security team, simplicity of the solution is key. Quantum Next Generation Firewalls easily enable them to secure and encrypt data in transit with VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) regardless of where the devices or users are located. Daily management is easy when a solution is comprehensive and flexible.

“Quantum Security Gateways’ versatility and ease of use are the most significant advantages we gained,” said Perez. “We’re delivering high web performance to internal and remote employees, thanks to HTTPS filtering and a full range of security features. We’ve protected our data, and engineers no longer spend weekends in the data center.”

Protection Everywhere
Harmony Endpoint has enabled Covinoc to greatly exceed the level of data security required by its associates and affiliates.. Since deploying Harmony Endpoint, Covinoc reduced spam to almost zero. Anti-ransomware and data encryption on endpoint devices deliver peace of mind, but more than that, , Harmony Endpoint protects the company’s sensitive assets from threats originated in home networks that could otherwise infect company devices.

“Everyone wins,” said Perez. “Our internal users rarely see spam and can work securely from anywhere. Our engineers spend far less time solving endpoint problems. And our affiliates know that their services are always available, safe, and encrypted.”

Proactive Replaces Reactive
Check Point R80 Security Management has changed the playing field for Covinoc by optimizing its team’s capabilities. Security gateways and endpoint protection can scale easily without having to add resources or sacrifice performance. Intuitive log management reduced problem-solving from hours to just minutes, and the team easily diagnoses issues at a glance to easily find solutions.

“Check Point R80 is a super-impressive management platform,” said Perez. “Instead of struggling with infrastructure, our team now dedicates time to analysis, proposes solutions, and moves strategic projects forward.”

“I would completely recommend Check Point for any company,” he continued. “We’ve reinforced security end to end—from firewalls and desktops to mobile laptops. That peace of mind has transformed our team to becoming innovative solution-finders instead of reactive problem-solvers.”