Bell Canada October 2020

Digital Transformation in Cyber Security and Networks IN ASSOCIATION WITH

BELL

DIGITAL REPORT 2020

Digital Transformation in Cyber Security and Networks 02

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www . b ell. ca

BELL

Bell’s Dominique Gagnon and Giovanni Sansalone guide us through digital transformation as it pertains to cyber security and network evolution

D

igital transformation is a critical imperative for companies across the world, but it can be a challenge to know where to begin. As

observed by Giovanni Sansalone, Vice President, Product Management at Bell, for those organizations undergoing digital transformation, there are 04

a number of factors that can impede success.

OVERCOMING THE CHALLENGES “The most common challenges come from initial resistance or a lack of desire to truly enact change.

It’s important to have everyone accept that they need to change in order to stay competitive, either by improving on the way they serve their customers and employees or being more effective at generating awareness.” Overcoming that resistance to change, Sansalone explains, requires involvement from the leadership team to make it clear why such a digital journey is necessary.

“The second challenge we encounter is a lack of expertise needed to understand the business problem from an end-to-end perspective,” says

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Dominique Gagnon,General Manager of the Cyber Security Practice at Bell www . b ell. ca

Threats come from anywhere, so we protect you everywhere.

Akamai and Bell: Securing and accelerating content to meet growing demand Tony Lauro, Director, Security Technology and Strategy at Akamai, on its work to accelerate content, enable remote working and provide cybersecurity Tony Lauro is Director, Security Technology and Strategy at Akamai Technologies - the world’s first content delivery network upon its founding in 1998.

“The co-founders of Akamai said that as the internet starts to grow, it will be almost impossible to have a single or even a cluster of servers handle the traffic from multi-millions of connections coming in. The solution was edge servers, and we’ve deployed over 250,000 of them geographically dispersed around the world closest to where the pockets of internet users are.”

Akamai has since expanded its remit beyond accelerating content to offering cloud security services. The massive reach of the Akamai platform allows for unique insight into cyberattacks and other security threats.

“We see about 25 to 30% of the world’s web traffic every day come across our platform,” says Lauro. “There’s major insights there that we can take to let us say this is bad traffic based on X, Y and Z. Over the years, we’ve expanded into protecting businesses from downtime against DDoS attacks as well as enterprise services to make sure that employees working from home can do so securely.”

The company’s relationship with Bell Canada extends back to 2016, with the partnership highlighting the key competencies of both businesses. “Some of the things we’ve been doing include accelerating content,” says Lauro. “We deliver live streaming services for Bell Raptors content. The Akamai platform is able to accelerate that content and make sure it’s highly available for all the devices that want to stream it.” Like many companies, its customers want more content, on more devices, anywhere and at any time. “We’re helping support that mission of Bell Canada and also supporting the needs of the internet at large.”

Lauro emphasises the fact that the company is ready to support the rapid digital transformations made

Tony Lauro @ Akamai

necessary by COVID-19. “Many companies are pushing out to mid-2021 to have any of their employees come back. Some are even saying they’re never going to come back to working in the office. But the challenges are still there. How do we make sure that while trusted applications are being accessed, that remote connectivity is not providing any additional risk to the trusted environment within the corporation?”

Akamai’s solution has involved working to expand a Zero Trust methodology. “That’s a SASE model which effectively says, as you connect from the outside and you come to the inside to an application, you’re not going from untrusted to trusted. Everything is considered untrusted. So instead of providing network connectivity to access an internal application, you’re just providing an application experience.”

Lauro sees that change to remote work as being a continuing trend for the Akamai-Bell partnership to respond to. “Companies are asking: how do you securely monitor the user experience that users are having while they work remotely? How do you monitor security on those devices to make sure that any corporate data is not compromised? The remote work model, alongside the digital transformation of all the other services that organisations are already trying to, is going to continue to grow and be a key driver in the year ahead.”

akamai.com

BELL

“ We focus on identifying what we are trying to improve in regards to the business problem that we’re trying to solve together”

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— Giovanni Sansalone, Vice President Product Management at Bell

Sansalone. “Many customers have expertise in certain areas, but when taking a holistic view, they often need to reach out and ask for advisory services in order to support them at every stage of their journey.”

Once organizations overcome these cultural and managerial obstacles, the problem of pre-existing technology rears its head. “The question faced is: how do you enable legacy infrastructure to support the various digital assets that you’re putting in place? How do you bridge the two worlds and connect and communicate between them?”

TRANSITIONING TO THE CLOUD One approach is transitioning to a cloud based platform. To take full advantage of cloud applications, enterprises need to decentralize access to those applications in order to provide a better user experience. “That decentralized approach, however, can be difficult to control and is more permeable from a penetration perspective. It requires a different approach, such as deploying controls in remote offices or leveraging cloud-based security.” says Dominique Gagnon, GM, Cyber Security Practice

at Bell. “There are many benefits to mov-

in partnership with Zscaler, a fully-

ing to cloud-based security, including

managed, cloud-based, secure

ease of operations, and cost reduction.”

access service edge (SASE) internet

The compromise, however, is the intro-

protection service. “The benefit of

duction of latency.

our service is that we deploy Zscaler’s

The best answer is adopting a hybrid

technology within our Bell infrastruc-

approach. As he explains, it’s clear that,

ture, giving our customers access

while contributing enormous benefits,

to all of our nodes across Canada,

digital transformation and moving to

thus helping to remove the latency

the cloud comes with many challenges.

challenges commonly faced by our

That tension is exactly what Bell’s offer-

customers who deploy a full cloud

ing seeks to remedy. “We just launched,

architecture,” says Gagnon.

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E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Dominique Gagnon Title: General Manager, Cybersecurity Practice Dominique Gagnon is the General Manager of the Cyber Security Practice at Bell with over 25 years of practical and educational experience in IT. Prior to Bell, Dominique was the VP Consulting Services at CGI managing the government vertical and leading the Canadian Cyber Security Center of Excellence Sales, Delivery and Operations. Dominique has expertise in P&L management, business engineering, strategic engagement management and infrastructure management with a focus on cyber security. He has negotiated, implemented and managed numerous large outsourcing contracts and led transformations and transitions for several large organizations. Dominique also served for 12 years in the Canadian Armed Forces. www . b ell. ca

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Enabling remote work: how IT can plan for 2021 and beyond

Kevin Magee of Microsoft Canada and Zscaler’s Lisa Lorenzin, discuss the benefits of a zero trust approach for enabling remote working “The initial response to COVID was: ‘we’re going to move everything temporarily to the cloud and we’re going to get through this, and then we’re just going to revert back to how things normally were,’” says Kevin Magee, Chief Security and Compliance Officer at Microsoft Canada. “And this crisis has really made businesses come to the realisation that they have to change what they’re doing if they’re going to secure their organisations for the future.”

While traditional conceptions of hard perimeter firewalls have their place, an evolution is now required in the new world of work. “If you were starting from scratch today, there’s no way that you would do a hard perimeter like that because cloud and mobility have made that hard perimeter, no longer sufficiently agile or sufficiently scalable,” says Lisa Lorenzin, Director, Transformation Strategy at Zscaler. However, Lorenzin explains that you’re not starting from scratch in most cases, so having collaborative partners like Microsoft and Zscaler working together can add value to a company. “Helping organisations transition through a transformation journey is where the guidance of Microsoft

and Zscaler working together with a strong connectivity partner like Bell Canada can really make a difference,” adds Lorenzin.

A zero trust approach sidesteps many of the challenges now being presented, as Lorenzin explains. “It’s about having a world of contextbased trust where the user may be on-premise or-off premise. The application may be in the data center or in the cloud, but the principle of zero trust still applies, which is: I don’t implicitly trust anyone to do anything.“ “Zscaler can offer network access that still provides the visibility and security that IT and Security needs to run and secure the business, but vastly increases the user experience.

Employees that are happy to use applications are better able to serve their customers,” says Magee. With such a transition taking place, Magee sees benefits across the IT professional landscape. “There’s been a positive shift in morale because we are finally delivering on the promise of zero trust, conditional access and a safe user experience that does not compromise security.”

BELL

Bell Canada – Benefits of Cloud Services CLICK TO WATCH

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1:36

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“We’re transforming at the heart of our network infrastructure” adds

communicate with their applications, or users, in a secure manner.”

Gagnon, “and virtualizing the network so that businesses can leverage the

KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR SUCCESS

cloud – spinning up different types

The first key area that companies

of services in order to adapt to the

should focus on is culture. As Gagnon

changing requirements of the busi-

points out, “organizations need to first

ness. Our innovative platform delivers

think about the leadership that they

network-as-a-service to its customers,

put in place to establish a culture that’s

giving users greater control over the

open to necessary change and to

way they interact with the network and

doing things differently.”

how they access different services.

The second key ingredient is to focus

We’ve embedded security directly into

on the business. “We have a very cus-

our network, so that customers can

tomer-centric approach in everything

we do,” says Gagnon. “We focus on

And fourth “It is so important to focus

identifying what we can improve from

on the infrastructure,” says Sansalone.

a business perspective and how we

“It’s vital to have an infrastructure which

can solve it together.”

will be adaptive and flexible, and allows

The third aspect involves leveraging

you to transform to deliver the services

the assets that the company has at its

and business processes needed by both

disposal. “The unique data and intel-

customers and employees. Having an

ligence that organizations have can

adaptable infrastructure that allows you

be used in order to further automate

to drive that agility in the market is abso-

or improve business, delivering greater

lutely critical.”

efficiency through business process automation and more”, outlines Gagnon.

Bell’s support goes further, with an online digital portal allowing participation 13

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Giovanni Sansalone Title: Vice President, Product Management Gio Sansalone is Vice President of Product Management of Bell Business Markets, a Canadian provider of IP-broadband, information and communications technology (ICT) services to Canadian business. He is responsible for the Business Market Product portfolio, including Network, Unified Communications, Security, Cloud and Managed Services across large, mid and government segments. Gio has launched a number of innovative products and services across networking, managed services and security including unique Cyber Threat Intelligence services leveraging the Bell Network. Gio holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from the University of Montreal, Canada www . b ell. ca

“ We see ourselves as being an important contributor to the cyber security community in Canada” — Dominique Gagnon, GM, Cyber Security Practice at Bell

in the end-to-end orchestration and delivery of services that customers require. “We have a strong portfolio of professional services that can help with advising clients on their journey, mapping out their processes, and then helping them support the implementation of those changes through the integration of technology and business processes,” Sansalone explains.

BELL’S CYBER SECURITY STRATEGY – A FIVE PILLAR APPROACH When it comes to cyber security, Bell

Bell Canada – Bell’s Security Model CLICK TO WATCH

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4:15

www . b ell. ca

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BELL

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“ We provide services around what is foundational in security” — Dominique Gagnon, GM, Cyber Security Practice at Bell

has implemented a strategy with its clients based on five pillars that reflect the key challenges organizations are facing.

“First we provide services around what is foundational in security – the existing controls that our clients have in place,” says Gagnon. “We help them make sense of, and can bring more efficiency to, those controls.

As an example, we’re working with FireEye technology to allow validation of controls within an environment and simplify the traditional approach to managing security. The overall objective is to reduce complexity in existing environments, making better use of investments while improving the security posture. www . b ell. ca

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Bell Canada – Overview of Bell CLICK TO WATCH

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The second pillar of strategy is

The third pillar of Bell’s strategy is

around next-generation security

around detection and response. “We

information and event monitoring

partnered with FireEye to launch our

(SIEM). “Our clients tell us that they

Bell Managed Threat Detection and

are not seeing the value of their legacy

Response platform, bringing best-in-

SIEM tools as they are not providing

class detection capability, coupled

the security alerts expected,” says

with a world-class incident response

Gagnon. “We partner with Fortinet

team to our clients.”

to provide the entire automated and

The fourth pillar is around cloud

orchestrated SIEM technology. This

security. “We work with best-in-class

will improve the visibility and response

partners such as Akamai, whose high

to security incidents, and bring a

performance distributed infrastruc-

best-in-breed and next-generation

ture allows us to enhance security for

platform to the market.”

our customers,” offers Gagnon. “We www . b ell. ca

BELL

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“ We’re transforming at the heart of our network infrastructure, and virtualising the network” — Giovanni Sansalone, Vice President Product Management at Bell

The fifth pillar involves dealing with the increase in data due to the introduction of 5G technologies. While this is still an emerging area, careful consid-

also partner with Cisco, FireEye and

eration and planning will be required

Zscaler to bring a wide range of cloud

moving forward to ensure organiza-

based security offerings.”

tions can securely adapt.

1880

Year founded

$23.96bn+ Revenue in CAD dollars

52,100 Number of employees

Gagnon and Sansalone are con-

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why we are the only communica-

fident that their innovations and

tions provider recognized by the IDC

strategies cement Bell’s position as

Marketscape as a Canadian leader

a leader in cyber security and digital

in security four years in a row.”

transformation. “We see ourselves as being an important contributor to the cyber security community in the field,” Gagnon says. “We have over 400 security professionals across Canada supporting three operation centres, and we partner with the leading technology companies in Canada. That’s www . b ell. ca

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