Ascend Money acquires a comprehensive endpoint security stack and gains advanced protection from malware

Ascend Money is a leading South East Asian fintech company committed to improving the lives of the ‘underbanked’ population in the region. Headquartered in Thailand, Ascend Money also has offices in Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Indonesia. The company is the first fintech unicorn in Thailand and is rooted in its mission to provide innovative financial services to all its customers in order to enhance their lives.

Given the current threat landscape in the fintech sector, Kanokwan Aimsumang, Head of IT Security and Governance, realised the criticality of opting for the best solution in the market to secure Ascend Money’s endpoint security stack from advanced malware and ransomware attackers.

Being a fintech company with e-wallet services, Ascend Money needed to protect itself from possible malware and ransomware attacks to protect customer data as well as the data of their business partners. Ascend Money wanted to deploy effective security solutions so there would be no disruption to their business on account of a cyberattack, and they selected True Digital Cyber Security to be their trusted managed service partner in this deployment.

Before the Palo Alto Networks solution was deployed, Kanokwan had teams overseeing endpoint security, a security advisor, an architect, and a security operations team that monitored network, cloud, and system security.

“With an increasing threat landscape, and being in the fintech space, we needed a consolidated solution that could give us uninterrupted ransomware and malware detection and protection for our endpoints,” Kanokwan said, before adding, “Ascend Money was looking for a solutions provider who could help us upgrade our technology by using AI and ML tools.”

Kanokwan and her team wanted to upgrade to a solution that offered them:

• Endpoint detection and protection together.
• Playbook integration with the existing Cortex XSOAR solution.
• Continuous protection with uninterrupted risk management.

True Digital Cyber Security had purchased an XSOAR license from Palo Alto Networks in 2019 and continued adding licenses to serve all the company’s customers, both external and internal. All security consulting, implementation, and managed services were being managed by True Digital Cyber Security. Use case testing demonstrated that the only way Ascend Money could stop sophisticated attacks was by opting for a solution that could manage endpoint detection and response together, to deliver enterprise-wide protection. Any solution they selected needed to integrate seamlessly with the existing XSOAR playbook that they had in place.

“Ascend Money leveraged Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XDR via True Digital Cyber Security because we understood how critical endpoint protection is for fintech companies, and this solution was the perfect match,” explained Kanokwan.

True Digital Cyber Security and Palo Alto Networks worked collaboratively in all onboarding and kickoff meetings. Palo Alto Networks remained a valuable consultant through the entire process of implementation. Speaking about her reasons for choosing the Palo Alto Networks solution over that of competitors, Kanokwan reiterated, “Cortex XDR from Palo Alto Networks offered us simplified integration and security automation, thereby reducing operation time significantly.”

Cortex XDR ensured that Ascend Money could protect their assets from any possible malware or ransomware attacks. By opting for a tried and tested solutions provider, Ascend Money will not have to encounter business interruption in the event of any new threats to their endpoints. They used the Palo Alto Networks solution to protect themselves at the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the team is convinced about the effectiveness of the solution.

Automation-driven detection, investigation, and response reduce operation time

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR uses machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to detect anomalies, thereby indicating the possibility of an attack. This has resulted in a direct benefit for Ascend Money, in terms of reducing human time spent on detecting similar threats as compared to before the solution was deployed.

Faster investigation and response time

With Cortex XDR, Ascend Money now has a complete picture of any attack and can gain information on the root cause of an alert with a mere click. To add to this, they can stop further attacks across the environment.

True Digital Cyber Security is the leading trustworthy Cyber Security service provider, providing end-to-end cyber security services, including cyber security and data privacy consultancy, security implementation, cloud security, managed security services, managed detection and response and penetration testing.

www.truedigital.com/cybersecurity