Envision Racing puts cybersecurity in high gear

Envision Racing isn’t your typical racing team. Owned by Envision a leading green-tech giant, Envision Racing is one of the founding teams of the revolutionary all-electric ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, and races with one purpose – to inspire generations to tackle climate change and accelerate the transition to E-mobility. As Envision Racing puts it: “Our cars, powered by pure electricity, pave the way for the cars of tomorrow and one core solution to the challenges presented by the combustion engine.”

Envision Racing competes annually on the streets of some of the World’s most iconic cities in a sport which has been described as ‘playing chess at 280km/h’. From a cybersecurity standpoint, this means protecting an infrastructure consisting of nomadic networks and endpoints. While the Envision Racing team enjoys the support of one of the world’s biggest digital energy companies, the team operates as efficiently as possible throughout the season to ensure it meets strict sustainability goals. That focus on being the “greenest team on the greenest grid” means responsibility for cybersecurity falls under the many responsibilities of the team’s Head of IT – which means the cybersecurity solutions must be simple, dependable, and self-reliant.

For a small and agile team, it is vital for the team to be protected by a cyber security solution that delivers a blend of simplicity, automation, and effectiveness. Prior to adopting the Palo Alto Networks portfolio, Envision Racing used a patchwork of security tools. The result was a fragmented and complex security ecosystem that provided poor threat visibility and was difficult for a nimble team to manage, ultimately providing inadequate protection.

Palo Alto Networks delivers best-in-class cybersecurity with the industry’s most complete portfolio of integrated security platforms and services. Backed by industry-leading threat intelligence and strengthened by state-of-the-art AI and automation, the portfolio forms an intelligence-driven, response-ready, proactive defence, allowing organisations to thrive in the face of uncertainty.

Envision Racing relies on a wide selection of Palo Alto Networks portfolio best-of-breed hardware and software products to protect its innovations including:

Network security made simple with greater visibility and sustainability

To protect its networks, Envision Racing uses the PA-440 Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs), VM Series NGFWs, and Panorama.

• The team uses the NGFWs to stay in front of the most complex threats. Deep learning, zero-day signatures, and ML-powered visibility drive proactive, intelligent security. “The PA-440 Next-Generation Firewalls have been a great solution for Envision Racing because, we didn’t have the capability to monitor network threats and vulnerabilities in an easy way. The firewall provides comprehensive protection including Threat Prevention, Advanced URL Filtering, WildFire, DNS Security, SD-WAN, IOT Security and SaaS Security Inline.”
• The virtualised ML-Powered NGFWs unite best-in-class security with speed, scale, and flexibility. “The VM-Series NGFWs are the ideal solution for Envision Racing as this provides all of the benefits the Next-Gen Firewalls bring, but with no physical footprint, and can run on the team’s existing virtual infrastructure.” This saves weight and size in the team’s freight, which in turn reduces transport costs and CO2 emissions.
• Panorama is deployed to monitor, configure, and automate security management. “With centralised visibility and policy management, Panorama gives us great visibility into our network health – and makes it extremely easy to use.”

Endpoint security with full visibility and analytics

Cortex XDR delivers visibility, behavioural threat protection, and rapid response in one connected endpoint security platform. “Having Cortex XDR installed on all of our endpoints, we can be sure that we have the best protection against known or zero-day exploits or attacks.”

In addition to leveraging Palo Alto Networks technology, the Envision Racing team has collaborated with KHIPU Networks to assist with the deployment, ongoing co-managed support, cybersecurity, and monitoring of the complete Envision Racing Palo Alto Networks estate. As a certified managed security service partner (MSSP) for Palo Alto Networks, KHIPU also provides 24x7x365 SOC and MDR services for Envision Racing, utilising Palo Alto Networks Cortex and XSOAR technology.

With Palo Alto Networks best-of-breed platforms, Envision Racing:

• Ensures the best possible security outcomes: The portfolio delivers a strong security posture to protect Envision Racing’s organisation in lock step with an ever-changing IT and threat landscape.
• Enjoys operational resilience: The team is confident that its cybersecurity investment in the Palo Alto Networks portfolio will allow them to grow their business with access to Palo Alto Network’s insight into attacks and threat actors across more verticals and geographies than anyone else.
• Drives operational efficiencies and reduces the cost of risk management.

Learn more about Palo Alto Networks on the website where you can also read many more customer stories.