Manufacturing giant makes Zero Trust transformation with Palo Alto Networks

A top 5 global chemical producer faced challenges with a fragmented legacy IT environment. Security gaps left the company’s 200-plus offices and production facilities vulnerable to cyberthreats and costly operational downtime. These gaps threatened opportunities with key partners in industries such as pharmaceuticals, textiles, and agriculture. The enterprise also needed to scale secure access to more than 70,000 remote employees at the start of the pandemic, which was not possible with the previous solution. To achieve its business and sustainability goals, the company leveraged the cloud and worked closely with Palo Alto Networks to implement a Zero Trust strategy.

• Unable to scale remote work by 3.5x when the pandemic hit.
• Low visibility into a hybrid mix of users, devices, and traffic.
• Limited network segmentation capabilities at branches and manufacturing facilities.

The Palo Alto Networks network security platform simplified the chemical company’s operations and streamlined management of its hybrid security infrastructure. Whether for remote workers, cloud environments, or manufacturing facilities, the solution empowered the company to easily identify and authenticate users and devices to control access granularly—an essential element of Zero Trust.

As a result of partnering with Palo Alto Networks, they've seen:

• 70,000+ users enabled to work remotely, up from 20,000, in a few weeks
• 67% reduction in number of vendors
• 68% increase in visibility into security blind spots

The company’s security posture for both its IT and OT environments improved, with greater visibility into users and devices, advanced segmentation capabilities, and real-time detection of known and unknown threats. Users gained a better experience, with lower latency and consistent access to critical cloud applications. With Palo Alto Networks as its partner, the enterprise is translating Zero Trust principles into business outcomes to lead the chemical industry in environmental and social responsibility.