How World Wide Technology Modernized Its Email Security and Set Its SOC Free

INDUSTRY

Technology Solutions

HEADQUARTERS

St. Louis, Missouri

COMPANY SIZE

12,000+ employees

OVERVIEW

Founded in 1990, World Wide Technology (WWT) is a global technology solutions provider leading the AI and Digital Revolution. WWT combines the power of strategy, execution and partnership to accelerate digital transformational outcomes for organizations around the globe. Through its Advanced Technology Center, a collaborative ecosystem of the world’s most advanced hardware and software solutions, WWT helps clients and partners conceptualize, test and validate innovative technology solutions for the best business outcomes and then deploys them at scale through its global warehousing, distribution and integration capabilities.

OUR SOLUTION

Wayne Cole, lead security engineer at World Wide Technology, stated:

"Harmony Email & Collaboration is considerably more efficient than the legacy system it replaced. Our SOC team found that our email-related security incidents and traffic with threats decreased by 80%. That is what the team used to have to work on all day. Now they focus on more pressing risk."

CHALLENGE

World Wide Technology (WWT) helps power its customers by delivering well-tailored technologies that maximize the return on investment and drive the best business outcomes possible. So, it’s no surprise when WWT found their own existing email security infrastructure growing increasingly obsolete, they sought a change for the better. WWT found itself grappling with its own set of cyber security challenges most companies will find familiar: a growing number of spam, phishing, and malicious emails began penetrating their digital defenses. As a result, the security operations center (SOC) team sometimes found themselves overwhelmed, forced to dedicate nearly 80% of their time to managing email-related incidents rather than addressing more strategic security initiatives.

"We were looking for a modern way to secure our email systems, as our aging traditional security gateway was no longer robust enough," said Wayne Cole, lead security engineer at WWT.

As Cole explained, WWT needed comprehensive email security capable of blocking sophisticated threats and a system that could integrate seamlessly with their Microsoft 365 environment. The constant stream of potentially dangerous emails created significant operational strain and risk for the organization. This grew especially risky as ever-more enticing phishing emails entered end-user mailboxes.

"No amount of end-user training was going to prevent them from clicking on a link, even after we repeatedly tell them not to click on it," said Cole. "We needed a secure email gateway system that would keep such attacks from ever getting in front of our end users to begin with," Cole added.

SOLUTION

After a comprehensive email security market evaluation, WWT selected Harmony Email & Collaboration. Harmony Email & Collaboration brings advanced AI-driven threat detection, real-time phishing and malware prevention, and robust data loss protection to secure business-critical communication channels across Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Teams, and Slack.

Harmony Email & Collaboration blocks sophisticated phishing and Business Email Compromise attacks before they ever reach the inbox by leveraging machine learning to analyze everything from metadata to historical trust relationships — all without disrupting workflow — an essential capability today as attackers increasingly target cloud collaboration platforms.

With seamless deployment, unified policy management, and a single dashboard for actionable insights, Harmony Email & Collaboration tightens the security perimeter and streamlines operations for security teams.

The implementation, meticulously planned and executed over two months, covered nearly 15,000 mailboxes, including service and shared accounts. Cole cited the key reasons behind why they chose Harmony Email & Collaboration: solid integration with the Microsoft 365 platform, a very intuitive user interface that made it easy to identify the reasons why potential threats were flagged, and strong integration with Palo Alto Networks’ extended security orchestration, automation, and response platform, Cortex XSOAR.

During the month-long Harmony Email & Collaboration deployment monitoring, WWT’s security team easily fine-tuned its security and filtering policies. It quickly came to understand Harmony Email & Collaboration’s full capabilities.

"Our entire deployment experience reinforced that Check Point was the best choice. Check Point’s support was very helpful throughout the process," Cole said.

Cole explained that Harmony Email & Collaboration’s unique routing rule programming interface and ability to provide granular email security controls were key differentiators. Harmony Email & Collaboration offered WWT the flexibility to customize protection while maintaining a seamless user experience.

OUTCOME

Harmony Email & Collaboration transformed WWT’s email security efforts, as WWT experienced an immediate 80% reduction in email-related security incidents. At the same time, the SOC team was liberated from constant email threat management.

"Harmony Email & Collaboration is considerably more efficient than the legacy system it replaced. Our SOC team found that our email-related security incidents and traffic containing threats decreased by 80%. That is what the team used to have to work on all day. Now they focus on more pressing risks," Cole said.

Cole also noted improved visibility.

"We also have better visibility in why certain attacks are happening, and it helps us considerably when researching specific incidents," Cole added.

"It’s been a dramatic upgrade for our email management efficiency as it’s extremely easy to use daily, and very few configuration changes are ever needed."

Not only has Harmony Email & Collaboration provided unprecedented visibility into email threats, but it’s also enabled more proactive security management. The successful blocking of spam and email threats has improved WWT’s end-user experience, while the seamless integration with Microsoft 365 meant minimal disruption to existing workflows. Perhaps most significantly, Harmony Email & Collaboration enabled WWT to transform its email security from a reactive, resource and time-intensive chore to a streamlined, intelligent system that now provides the company with comprehensive Email and cloud collaboration protection with minimal overhead.

Finally, Scott Pogue, a WWT technical solutions architect, explained how Harmony Email & Collaboration is helping WWT’s customers better keep their email secure.

"Email is typically the most business-critical application that most companies have. Because while there are a lot of different systems within customer environment that can go down, when email goes down, it is immediately detrimental to the business. Harmony Email & Collaboration makes that bad outcome something much less likely to happen to our customers," he said.

"Our entire deployment experience reinforced that Check Point was the best choice. Check Point’s support was very helpful throughout the process."

Wayne Cole, lead security engineer at World Wide Technology