Palo Alto Networks enables Lintasarta to deliver on 99.99% service-level agreement (SLA) uptime

Lintasarta is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) total solutions company founded in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1988. They have enabled more than 2,500 companies across all industry segments, including finance, resources, government, manufacturing, services, and trading or distribution, to grow beyond their capabilities with digital transformation initiatives.

Mr. Luky Kurniawan, VP, SQURA Cybersec, recalls how the company partnered with Palo Alto Networks eight years ago, when they modernized their cloud security infrastructure from the built-in network security features they had in their cloud infrastructure platform. “We recognized the need to upgrade our security infrastructure to keep pace with the changes in business demand. We wanted a security solution that could ideally offer us three value propositions at the same time. We needed customization capabilities for granular control of network security for our virtual machines (VMs). We also wanted effortless deployment across VMs in a centralized manner and compelling cloud security so our customers could benefit from higher service-level agreement (SLA) uptime or availability.”

With an evolving threat landscape and a growing customer base, it was time for Lintasarta to upgrade from the legacy security solution they had in place for their cloud infrastructure. “We were an extremely lean team and it was becoming increasingly difficult for us to manage all the VM firewall security. To add to this, we had limited capabilities with regard to NGFWs,” says Luky.

The existing solution was the starting point when it came to cloud security infrastructure, providing merely Layer 3 and Layer 4 network security. As Luky elaborates, “The existing network security was unable to accommodate the threat complexities. Layer 7 security is able to address this; interfacing directly with the user and their data, luring bad actors looking to access user credentials and other personal information.”

Being an ICT total solutioning company, Lintasarta wanted to increase their customer SLAs by integrating their firewalls and bringing in automation. Luky was looking for “a single pane-of-glass dashboard management console, especially for reporting.” Lintasarta was also experiencing many false positives prior to Palo Alto Networks, where tickets were issued for incidents that were not legitimate security threats, causing additional work. This resulted in more time being spent on investigating low-priority incidents for their small security team.

Lintasarta was looking to partner with a security provider who could deploy NGFWs and meet the following requirements:

• Automation of customer reports and NGFWs to protect against advanced cyberthreats.
• Remote access security, controlled web access, and restriction of access to sites with malware.
• Single pane-of-glass visibility while maintaining the sovereignty of their customers.

Lintasarta wanted to ensure that the chosen solution would gurantee customers 99.99% SLA and also integrate with Unified Lintasarta Ticketing Monitoring Automation (ULTIMA), their self-service portal for customers.

Lintasarta deployed Palo Alto Networks NGFWs across all three of their data centers in Indonesia and also had approximately 50 deployments across their customers’ branches. “Palo Alto Networks focuses on providing cybersecurity solutions and that is their value proposition. Aside from the fact that the company ranks as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, Palo Alto Networks offers customizable capabilities for specific products targeting specific challenges,” explains Luky. He further elaborates, “For instance, NGFWs protect against advanced cyberthreats with granular control, GlobalProtect secures remote access through encryption and authentication, WildFire, and URL Filtering controls web access by users and restricts access to sites with malware.”

Layer 7 NGFW protection from Palo Alto Networks replaced legacy Layer 3 and Layer 4 security, instilling confidence among Lintasarta customers, as sensitive data is now secured with proven network security solutions. Luky talks about how Lintasarta detected around one–two million attacks per day, when they initially deployed the Palo Alto Networks solution. Luky also highlights the fact that Lintasarta had significant false positives before deployment of the Palo Alto Networks solution and this has reduced to almost zero currently. The adoption of Palo Alto Networks solutions has significantly enhanced Lintasarta’s network security posture, as the solution protects both Lintasarta and their customers against known and unknown threats. Now, Lintasarta has visibility across a single dashboard, delivering 99.99 SLA uptime to their cloud customers.

Prior to deploying NGFWs from Palo Alto Networks, Lintasarta was able to offer their cloud customers a three-nines SLA. Now, they can guarantee their customers four-nines uptime and availability. That is an increase from 99.9% availability to 99.99% SLA.

Twenty percent increased productivity year over year with automation

Lintasarta has retained the same two people as their security team, but has increased productivity by 20 percent year over year, through automation. Luky explains this further, saying, “We are not reducing the number of people within our security team. Instead, we have been able to increase the number of assets managed by the lean security team.” Alongside, with increased threat intelligence, Lintasarta receives fewer false positives, reducing it from 40% to 5% currently.

Customizable, scalable, affordable solution

With Palo Alto Networks, Lintasarta is able to customize their security solutions and enable granular control of network security policies to their customers. The solution is also scalable as it can be effortlessly deployed to large numbers of VMs to support their customers’ needs. Being a long-standing customer of Palo Alto Networks, Lintasarta has been able to build on top of their technologies and transfer those economies of scale to their end users.

Single pane-of-glass for ease of monitoring, unified reporting

Even though Lintasarta has a large number of deployments, they are easily managed using a single dashboard. This gives the customer the benefit of unified reporting as the single pane-of-glass unifies data or interfaces across different sources and presents them in a single view. With this, customers and the board at Lintasarta have assured network security that is protected by the best industry standards.

Lintasarta is a managed security services partner or MSSP with Palo Alto Networks and they offer an integrated solution to numerous customers across industries. Luky states, “Palo Alto Networks has a dedicated team that is invested in developing the MSSP program successfully. Partnering with Palo Alto Networks brings the best of Lintasarta in the market, enabling us to deliver optimum outcomes for both ourselves and our customers to keep pace with the changing threat landscape.” Luky acknowledges the consistent support that he has received from the Palo Alto Networks team in Indonesia.

Going forward, Lintasarta is excited to explore more technologies, such as Prisma SASE and Cortex XDR from Palo Alto Networks. They plan to implement both these technologies within their own security operations center and for their customers, as they believe this will offer a win-win situation for both parties.

Find out more about how Palo Alto Networks best-in-class network security solutions can benefit your organization. Additional information can be found here.