Manufacturing

Cisco secures Labconco’s operations

Established in 1925, Labconco is a leading provider of laboratory products for hospitals and labs around the world. “Our mission is to keep the researchers safe and scientific innovation moving forward,” says Jason Phillips, network engineer at Labconco. “As a top manufacturer of lab equipment, we take pride in the quality of our products and in the customer service we offer.”

Labconco’s main manufacturing campus is in Kansas City, Missouri, with an additional facility located in Fort Scott, Kansas. “As a network engineer, my goal is to keep the infrastructure secured in both these locations so that our operations can run smoothly and uninterrupted,” Phillips remarks.

As an innovator in a highly competitive manufacturing sector, Labconco values intellectual property. “Unlike financial institutions, we are not a storehouse of identities,” says Phillips. “Our threats mainly target trademarks and other proprietary information we have. There are no monetary gains for the bad actors to target us; it's more for the intellectual content.”

However, like most organizations, Labconco has to deal with social engineering risks. “We use Cisco Duo for multi-factor authentication. We use antivirus solutions that give us phishing alerts. But the human factor is still the scariest thing because our employees may just click on something that eventually opens the doors for the bad actors to enter,” adds Phillips. “I can’t stop them from doing that, so I educate them.”

Phillips regularly arranges security awareness workshops for Labconco’s employees as a final line of defense. But he realizes the importance of having multiple layers of defense. “We implement layered security using the Cisco security portfolio stack. We take regular backups to mitigate ransomware risks,” says Phillips.

Labconco has about 300 physical users including employees and third-party vendors. There are 18,000 devices in the network, including IoT devices like 3D printers, cameras, and door security devices. “We can’t completely control human behavior, but we can add security controls to determine the traffic that goes in and out of our networks,” Phillips remarks.

Labconco uses Cisco firewalls for perimeter security along with Cisco Secure Endpoint and Cisco Umbrella. Phillips explains, “The URL filtering capabilities of Cisco firewalls, along with Secure Endpoint and Umbrella at the edge, give me the visibility into exactly what we are blocking.”

For a long time, Labconco used Cisco ASA firewalls. But as the company’s applications and network usage grew, Phillips knew he needed more visibility and integration of functions to operate efficiently with his small infrastructure team.

That’s when Labconco decided to migrate to the next generation of Cisco firewalls — Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD), managed by the Cisco Firewall Management Center (FMC).

Firewall migration made easy

Firewall migration, especially in production environments, involves various complications. Migrating the large configurations is an error-prone process and can take long hours if done manually. Errors could lead to operational issues and network downtime. But thanks to the Cisco Secure Firewall Migration Tool, it was a different story for Labconco.

“The Cisco Secure Firewall Migration Tool made the transition to FTD very smooth and easy,” Phillips says. “The tool parsed my ASA configurations line by line, validated the configurations that will work in FTD, and flagged the configurations that I needed to remove. The migration tool allowed me to validate the configurations without physically plugging in FTD. Knowing it will all work gave me the confidence to replace the old firewall and alleviated the stress such a migration usually involves. Just that confidence and the convenience of having the tool were huge benefits.”

The migration tool enabled Phillips to save time during the migration process. “Depending on the policies and rules of the firewall, in some instances we had 50 pages’ worth of configurations. Having the parsing automated and knowing which configurations are obsolete was a big time-saver because I didn’t have to research all of it,” says Phillips. “The firewall migration was simple and seamless with no issues. The migration tool made life easy for me. Most importantly, downtime due to the migration was zero, thanks to the migration tool.”

Improved security efficiencies with Cisco FTD

After migrating to on-premises FTD and FMC, Labconco gained new efficiencies due to the integration and visibility of the new generation of Cisco firewalls.

“What I like most is that everything updates itself. I do not have to download the latest virus definition files or upgrade the intrusion detection system (IDS) already integrated there. It’s all automated,” Phillips explains. “The FMC, of course, always has to be higher than your FTD versions, so I try to stay with that as best as possible.”

FTD opens new possibilities to scale better with the integration of multiple security functions in one box. “It’s very useful to have URL filtering, the IDS, and threat intelligence integrated right on my firewall,” says Phillips.

The integration has also simplified security management for Labconco. “I can define the policies involving IDS and Secure Endpoint more easily,” Phillips adds.

The FMC dashboard gives an integrated view. “Now Secure Endpoint, Umbrella, and FTD are integrated, and I see their feeds from one portal. With the dashboard, we can seamlessly scale our network and operations faster, and it gives us a robust feel and flavor, thanks to the Cisco next-generation firewall services,” says Phillips.

Having a view of everything in a single pane of glass gives Labconco improved visibility. “In the FMC dashboard, I can see the top attackers, top targets, and any anomalies that might be out there. It gives me confidence knowing that I have enough visibility to detect threats or know for sure that there aren’t any,” Phillips explains. “I can get granular and have visibility into endpoints that aren't even on my network, such as the ones in my company's network, even though they aren’t behind the firewall. Right now, everything is at my fingertips, and I don’t have that much happening. We have the buy-in of our stakeholders because we’ve had no security incidents. And that’s a good thing.”

MyInvestor uses Cisco Multicloud Defense to gain visibility and centralized control to secure its dynamic cloud workloads.

Resilience and peace of mind

The integration, visibility, and auto-update capabilities of FTD have made Labconco’s business operations more resilient to threats. Labconco’s security posture has also improved and is now under control. “We are now more resilient, and we’re better postured to respond to certain incidents if they occur,” says Phillips.

“I consider the time savings and better operational efficiencies the biggest returns on investment in migrating to Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense. I see things so easily now whereas before I had to search for them. Having that visibility without having to dig in the weeds is a huge benefit. It parses out a level where humans can see better,” Phillips continues. “Now I can use my time more wisely. The visibility added clarity, and I know what to delegate to people.”

Phillips concludes, “What I like most about Cisco firewalls is that I’ve never had any issues or problems. They make my life easy. I can rest assured that they are doing what they are supposed to do.”