Birlasoft modernizes network security to drive resilience at a global scale

SUMMARY

Birlasoft is a global technology company specializing in cloud, AI, data, and enterprise solutions. The company helps organizations accelerate digital transformation to deliver the agility, resilience, and customer experience that modern business demands. As part of the CKA Birla Group, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate with a 170-year legacy, Birlasoft’s more than 12,000 employees bring the scale and credibility of an established enterprise to the cutting edge of technology services.

Headquartered in Pune, India, Birlasoft operates across multiple domestic locations and maintains international offices in London, Singapore, Dubai, São Paulo, Canada, and the United States. Over time, the company’s global footprint had grown into a complex tangle of legacy systems and fragmented vendor relationships that its security infrastructure was no longer equipped to handle.

RESULTS

>55%

reduction in security breaches

40%

cost reduction

~50%

improved operational efficiency

50%+

outage reduction

CHALLENGES

Legacy systems and vendor sprawl leave a global enterprise exposed.

With legacy tools from a range of vendors across several geographies, Birlasoft struggled to maintain consistent security standards and operational efficiency.

High network costs due to legacy infrastructure
Lack of agility and scalability to support business growth.
Inferior application performance for both on-site and remote employees.
Inconsistent security across endpoints as a result of fragmented legacy technology.

“Our main challenges were ensuring consistent security across all endpoints, improving user experience, and consolidating our security infrastructure to drive operational efficiency.”

— Lalit Kumar Gole

Head of Technology & Operations,
Birlasoft

SOLUTIONS

Consolidation as a competitive advantage.

Faced with a sprawling mix of aging tools and disconnected vendors, Birlasoft made a deliberate choice: Rather than patch the gaps, rebuild the foundation. The company selected Palo Alto Networks® as its primary security partner, a decision driven by both performance and philosophy. “They offered innovation, reliability, and comprehensive security features,” says Lalit Kumar Gole, head of Technology & Operations. “Their ability to consolidate services, defend against new and unknown threats, and support our hybrid work environment set them apart from other providers.”

Building a unified security foundation

Birlasoft had already deployed Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Hardware Firewalls across eight locations, establishing robust perimeter security for branch offices and data centers. Once the platformization decision was made, it added Cloud-Delivered Security Services—including Advanced Threat Prevention, Advanced WildFire, Advanced URL Filtering, and Advanced DNS Security—to provide continuous, intelligence-driven defense against known, unknown, and advanced threats. Together, the hardware and CDSS stack give Birlasoft a consistent, centrally managed security posture that its previous vendor mix hadn’t been able to deliver.
Simplifying connectivity for a distributed workforce

With the core infrastructure in place, Birlasoft turned to the challenge of connecting its people, whether they work in branch offices, data centers, or remotely. SD-WAN for NGFW replaced a costly tangle of domestic and international multiprotocol label switching connections, reducing ISP dependencies and dramatically improving application performance for users across geographies. This extended the transformation further, ensuring that remote and hybrid workers received the same consistent protection as those in physical offices, without the complexity of managing separate solutions for each environment.
Results that reach across the business

The impact of consolidating onto a single platform extended well beyond the security team. Birlasoft clocked a dramatic reduction in security breaches—greater than 55%—and a 50–60% reduction in network outages. These, in turn, translated to significant avoided losses annually. Other gains were equally as notable:

For a company whose business is helping clients navigate digital transformation, having its own infrastructure running with this level of reliability and efficiency makes Birlasoft not only a model of success but an enabler of productivity.
Looking ahead: securing the AI frontier.

With its security foundation modernized, Birlasoft is now focused on staying ahead of the next wave of risk. The use of AI within security tools is central to its strategy, particularly for proactively identifying threats and automating response actions. Simultaneously, the company is exploring deployment of Prisma BrowserTM to secure the use of generative AI tools within its workforce, ensuring that employees can adopt new technologies safely and in compliance with policy without slowing the pace of innovation.