How Exabeam Helps Meissner Make Sense of Big Data

Meissner Filtration, founded in 1984 and based in Camarillo, California, is a leading manufacturer serving the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, microelectronics, ultrapure chemicals, food and beverage, and allied industries.

Like many organizations today, Meissner prioritizes network security based on collecting physical access logs from numerous system endpoints. With so much data it was a challenge to efficiently aggregate, store, and manage the massive amounts of data generated and collected by their systems. Zane Gittins, IT security specialist at Meissner, effectively sums up their challenge, “A lot of our endpoints were generating logs, but we needed a way to translate that into security data and ultimately store and correlate what we were collecting.”

Traditionally a time and labor-intense process of aggregating, storing, and correlating physical access and digital endpoint data; with Exabeam’s cloud-based solution, Meissner can quickly index and search masses of security data, improving endpoint visibility and network security. Get the full story of Meissner’s successful partnership with Exabeam by reading our case study “Helping Meissner Make Sense of Masses of Security Data” here.

Volumes of data

The good news for today’s organizations is the abundance of endpoint data available to improve network visibility and security. As endpoints grow exponentially, more and more data flows from hundreds of systems. But what good is this data if it can’t be organized and analyzed to help bolster your organization’s security posture?

This was the challenge the security team at Meissner faced. They needed a solution to collect and manage their valuable system-generated data quickly and efficiently. Numerous access logs required conversion into usable security data then correlated to support Meissner’s security initiative for improved visibility that would surface potential issues and security threats.

Additionally, Meissner had some specific needs. The desired solution must allow their team to quickly index and search data, pointing to an elastic stack. Meissner previously attempted an on-premises ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana) solution, but they found it wasn’t a fit for a small team. As a smaller operation, Meissner needed a comprehensive SaaS solution.

“Another one of our requirements was SaaS because we just didn’t have the bandwidth to do it on-prem. Our team would be managing the ELK stack instead of actually searching for threats and writing rules.” — Zane Gittins, IT security specialist, Meissner

The Meissner team determined a cloud solution would be best to drive the desired level of efficiency and accuracy. They also wanted an easily integrated solution — something they could plug into their existing logging stack.

An easier solution

Exabeam’s solution impressed Meissner with its simplicity from day one. “We’re generating event logs across hundreds of systems, and that’s getting sent to a central location, and with Exabeam, it was so easy just to tie that central location and send all that data to Exabeam. And it was easier with Exabeam than a lot of the other solutions we tried,” says Gittens.

Exabeam’s platform further lightened the load for Meissner by automating all labor-intensive tasks involved in the aggregation, storing, and correlation of their data. Meissner analysts enjoyed significant time savings along with an improved context for writing rules. With Exabeam, analysts could add user or asset scores to a timeline then simply triage the timelines to significantly expedite workflow. Viewing incidents in context provided Meissner analysts with a clearer threat perspective and helped them write better rules, resulting in a higher level of security for the organization.

Results delivered

Ultimately, choosing Exabeam allowed the Meissner team to convert their physical access logs into manageable, usable resources supporting the organization’s robust security initiative. As a result, Meissner found a fast, efficient, accurate, and cost-effective solution for aggregating, storing, and managing their endpoint data. The Meissner team now benefits from greater freedom, focusing efforts on specialized tasks, while Exabeam collects and manages their network’s data providing improved visibility and a higher level of security across the enterprise.

For details on how Meissner successfully teamed with Exabeam, please read the entire case study here.