Case study
Presidio deploys runZero for greater visibility across their internal and client networks
Problem
Presidio is a Global Digital Services and Solutions Provider that delivers managed services and solutions to help organizations strengthen their security posture. Internally, Presidio lacked visibility into their environment and needed help with their asset inventory. The team knew they wanted automated discovery capabilities that could deliver asset visibility across not only their internal networks, but for their clients as well.
Solution
As Presidio looked into asset discovery solutions, they recalled a tool they had learned about on Reddit called runZero. runZero, a network visibility and asset inventory solution, doesn't require endpoint agents or credentials for discovery. Within a few days, they were able to self-deploy runZero internally and set up recurring scans to update their asset inventory. Now, when it comes to the next step of their workflow with a CMDB like ServiceNow, the system is able to automatically ingest data from runZero.
Outcomes
After seeing immediate success with their internal deployment, they started using runZero to onboard clients to their managed service programs. With runZero, they've been able eliminate spreadsheets, thereby reducing the amount of time spent manually collecting client data. Instead, they can focus on delivering outcomes for their clients.
Why runZero?
"runZero eliminates the complexity and cost barrier present in most asset discovery solutions. Other tools are not only expensive and difficult to deploy, and their discovery capabilities are secondary. runZero purely focuses on asset discovery. It has become a tool in our arsenal and helped us speed up client onboarding and investigations," says Ryan Pinga, President of Cybersecurity Services and Maintenance Services at Presidio. "The last thing our clients want to do is fill out a spreadsheet or answer questions about their assets. We want to show to our clients that we are helping them focus on doing more valuable things for their company."
Problem: Building and automating a centralized asset inventory
Presidio, a Global Digital Services and Solutions Provider, lacked visibility into their own internal networks and needed help creating their asset inventory. They wanted a centralized view of everything on their internal, AWS, and virtual environments, so they could quickly find and answer questions about their networks and assets. The solution had to be easy to deploy, cost-effective, and able to pull serial numbers from devices. Presidio needed a solution that could help them keep their tools and data up-to-date.
Most of the discovery solutions they evaluated were expensive, bundled with other solutions, and required credentials or agents for scanning. Finding a solution that only performs discovery and gathers detailed information — particularly serial numbers — from devices was critical for them. “Most tools are very expensive because inventory is included as part of those solutions — it’s not a standalone capability. We only wanted a tool that just did asset inventory,” said Pinga. The team wanted to be able to quickly query and find assets on their network. Another challenge Presidio faced were inefficiencies with their client onboarding process. For their Managed Services offerings, they had to manually gather and input asset data into spreadsheets, which became outdated just as fast as they were inputting it. “It’s very difficult to build an asset inventory — especially with so many people working remotely. We were interviewing customers and having to manually input information into spreadsheets,” said Pinga.
Solution: Fast deployment and immediate insights with runZero
Immediately after the team deployed runZero, they were able to gain insights into their environment. For example, Presidio was able to pull serial numbers from devices, which can be useful for support and warranty tracking. With the ability to view the serial numbers and export the data as an SNTC-compatible export, Presidio can share data between runZero and the Smart Net Total Care (SNTC) portal.
"The part we really like about runZero is that it's very simple to use, but it has solved multiple complex business and technical problems for Presidio and our clients. One of the ideas we had early on was: how can we leverage runZero to collect and export serial numbers from infrastructure devices, such as Cisco devices, to help ease the burden on our clients during a SMARTnet renewal phase. The runZero team delivered a new feature that allowed us to discover and export that information for our clients in about a week."
With runZero, Presidio is able to set up recurring scans that run daily, so they always have an up-to-date asset inventory. The team has also set up custom rules to alert when new devices appear in their inventory. “We want to know when an engineer who shouldn’t have access to something spins up a VM without alerting their team. Today, if someone spins up something they shouldn’t, it’ll show up in runZero as part of our recurring scan and see when it was first discovered. We have filters in place that show us anything that was newly discovered in the last seven days,” said Joe Williams, Senior Manager of Platform Ops at Presidio.
Armed with a comprehensive, up-to-date inventory, they’re able to query for information and find issues they hadn’t been able to before. “We monitor certificate expirations (TLS), search for SMBv1 and ensure it’s not enabled (we discovered that their GPO (group policy object) wasn’t catching it). We partnered runZero with other tools to ensure that our work lists were working and the policies that they’re pushing (non-GPO based) are catching issues as well.”
Outcomes: runZero becomes a key part of Presidio's arsenal of tools
runZero is now part of Presidio's arsenal of tools, not only for internal discovery, but for client onboarding as well. Presidio can quickly deploy a runZero Explorer in their client network and start scanning. With other tools, deployment required credentials or endpoint agents, which was not a feasible route for them.
“There was an incident where we were asking our client about subnets, specific devices, OSes that were still running Windows 2003, and the client didn’t know. So we were able to run a runZero scan to put together an inventory to help them answer these types of questions,” said Pinga. “We were able to scan their entire environment to get a good snapshot within a couple of hours for multiple sites — it gave our client immediate insight and delivered value to the client and to Presidio because we were going to have to figure out the answers to those questions anyway to help protect their clients appropriately.”
runZero can enrich asset data in other systems, like CMDBs, and quickly pinpoint potential security risks in their environment, like systems with SMBv1 enabled. “The fact that the data is available, programmatically with structured data, we can take that and consume it anywhere we want,” said Pinga.
With runZero, Presidio is able to streamline asset discovery, and as a result, optimize efficiencies across multiple areas of their business. “We couldn’t ask for any more from a vendor and partnership. It’s been fantastic.” said Pinga.
"We couldn't ask for any more from a vendor and partnership. It's been fantastic.'' - Ryan Pinga
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