Company Overview
Founded in 1948, Silver Fern Farms partners with farmers who use a grass-based system which optimizes natural resources and uses low-intensity farming practices to minimize environmental impact.
In Silver Fern Farms own words, they “care deeply about doing the right thing and doing it well, striving every day to be the world’s most successful and sustainable grass-fed red meat company.“ They are a one of New Zealand’s leading exporters, providing premium lamb, beef and venison, and recognized as an industry leader in the humane treatment of animals. They also lead the way with environmental sustainability having introduced “Net Carbon Zero by Nature” in 2021. “Net Carbon Zero by Nature” is New Zealand’s first certified grass-fed, end-to-end Net Carbon Zero red meat.
Challenges
Digital Transformation Requires Shift in Protection Strategy
Primary Sector organizations like Silver Fern Farms are making the critical shift to integrating new internet based technologies into their day-to-day business operations. However, the shift increased the company’s responsibility to protect their applications, as any potential disruption could impact their employees ability to work, customers ability to purchase their goods, and their overall bottom line and reputation. With the impact of cyber attacks increasing, companies are also facing increasing legal, regulatory and compliance requirements.
Although geographically isolated, New Zealand has experienced a number of high profile cyber incidents, including denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Silver Fern Farms needed a proactive strategy to strengthen its shield for its digital infrastructure from potential threats. The team identified gaps and looked for ways to reduce the risks.
Deployment
Imperva Cloud WAF: Easy to use, fast to deploy, and reduces risk
Silver Fern Farms conducted an independent and thorough vendor evaluation to determine which solution best suited their business needs. Part of this review leveraged Silver Fern Farms existing strategic partnership with Chillisoft, a specialist cybersecurity distributor, representing industry-leading vendors in New Zealand, Australia, and throughout the South Pacific.
Tony Allwood, Cybersecurity Manager at Silver Fern Farms, noted that Chillisoft was able to use their local knowledge of successful DDoS attacks targeting other New Zealand organizations to show how Imperva Cloud WAF’s comprehensive DDoS solution would aid its protection.
Imperva Cloud WAF works to stop attacks with near-zero false positives, leveraging a global SOC to strive to bolster an organization’s protection from the latest attacks. Cloud WAF is part of a multi-layered Application Security solution that combines Advanced Bot Protection, Advanced API Protection, and Advanced DDoS Protection, all from within a centralized management console.
Imperva’s intuitive interface and seamless onboarding process empowered the company to quickly deploy the solution, enabling efficient implementation by their team. “Once the knowledge transfer had been completed, in reality, Tony [at Silver Fern Farms] took over after the first couple of days of implementation and has rolled it out to many, many more sites himself, which is a testimony of the ease of use of the solution,” said Alex Teh, CEO at Chilisoft.
Having localized Imperva support also enhanced Silver Fern Farms’ experience with Imperva. The ability to reach out locally and have their questions answered helped to give assurance that if an issue were to arise, Imperva would be there to support them through it. “It’s not like, oh, I’ve taken your number and somebody will call you back. We have to escalate this to level two. It’s like the person on the call is able to answer the question, fix the problem, and get it working. And if we are in the middle of an incident, that’s what we want,” said Allwood.
Results
Real time monitoring and stakeholder visibility
Imperva Cloud WAF has equipped Silver Fern Farms with a heightened level of visibility, enabling their team to monitor and analyze cyber threats in real-time. User-friendly dashboards and monthly reports with granular detail are distributed to key stakeholders across the company to reinforce that the cyberteam is monitoring threats and that protection tools are in place.
“I can use the reporting to hold that narrative to the organization. There’s the operational side with the teams there, there’s a tactical component with this where we are wanting to lead with our security, and then a strategic component as well. And then, the governance layer, where we are going back to the people that are heading the organization and show that we are following good practices. Having the reporting tools to do that and show we’ve been proactive about addressing some of these things—I think that’s a big benefit for us,” said Allwood.
Silver Fern Farms proactive protection helps to shield their infrastructure against attacks, and minimizes operational disruptions that could impact service availability for customers and place employee’s job security in jeopardy. In addition, the insights gained from the Cloud WAF reporting capabilities allows the company to optimize website performance, ultimately enhancing customer experience and securing the company’s overall bottomline and reputation.
The collaborative efforts of Silver Fern Farms, Chillisoft, and Imperva showcases the power of a strategic alliance in working to safeguard against the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape. “Partnering with an organization and a product where we are comfortable that they’re keeping pace with what’s going on… that’s important,” said Allwood.
