Why NTT DATA Chose Swimlane for Security Automation

How low-code automation helps NTT Data transform security for enterprise customers.

NTT Data is a global digital business and IT services leader – their experts advise, design, integrate, and operate information and communications technology (ICT) solutions for clients worldwide. Their EMEA branch works with some of the regions leading companies to address their most pressing challenges in a fast-changing, always-connected world.

According to Patrick Schraut, Senior Vice President of Cybersecurity at NTT Data, “what we’re doing is digital transformation. We support the customer in their digital journey. So, we’re doing everything – the infrastructure, the application stack, and managed services. Whatever they need in IT, we’re there for our customers.”

It’s no surprise that staffing shortages, growing threats, and compliance requirements are significant challenges for security teams. NTT Data’s cybersecurity experts sought a tool to accelerate the solutions to these challenges through innovation and collaboration. Security automation was the perfect fit.

“All of our customers have increased cybersecurity needs, but they don’t have the people to fulfill them, and they don’t find the people. If you look at the market, you’ll see the industry is looking for roughly 4.5 million cybersecurity experts – obviously, they are not going to find them. So what we need is automation, and that’s where Swimlane comes in.”

Serving a Diverse Portfolio of Clients

NTT Data provides cybersecurity services to clients across many industries including financial services, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing. These industries have unique requirements such as regulatory compliance, operational technology (OT) environments, and frequently changing technology stacks. On top of that, these enterprise clients are prime targets for cyber threats, especially ransomware.

With so many different industries requiring different types of security controls, NTT Data needed a security automation platform that could be easily customized for each client’s unique workflows yet provide the complexity required to quickly detect and respond to potential threats.

“I’m 100% convinced that every customer that is operating a SIEM system, that’s operating a log management solution, a SOC whatsoever – if they want to survive, they need some kind of automation.”

Why NTT Data Chose Swimlane

Swimlane’s low-code security automation platform was an attractive choice for NTT Data when compared to other automation platforms for its agnostic integrations, customizable use cases, and playbooks, as well as its overall reliability. An especially important part of NTT Data’s decision-making process was Swimlane’s commitment to security automation – and only security automation.

For other automation platforms on the market, Schraut explains, “automation is just a part of their business. So they have an overall strategy they want to implement, and this doesn’t fit every customer…they might invest now, but what in six months, what in 12 months? They just don’t have the power to really work on automation – that’s what we tell our customers.”

“We’re a Japanese company, we have a long-term engagement with our customers, and we need to make sure we have a solution that’s also running in one year, two years, three years.”

Customizable Use Cases: For Schraut, “the piece that our engineers and customers like most about Swimlane is the easiness of editing use cases. Just uploading a template with the different playbooks, or creating a new one.”

Integrations: With an agnostic approach to integrations across the SOC, Swimlane gives NTT Data the freedom to select the security tools best suited for its customers and its own operations. Alex Stemper, Head of Cyber Defense Consulting at NTT Data explains, “what we love about Swimlane is that we can interact with different kinds of systems – it’s not important what vendor or solution you have on the other side, there are always possibilities to integrate with those systems by using API.”

Playbooks: “It’s really flexible. If you’re building, for example, some kind of playbook, it’s really easy even if you cannot program by yourself, so it’s a low-code option…It’s really possible to develop in new areas, or build integrations without having deep know-how in java or python or anything else.”

How Security Automation Amplifies Business Results

As a new customer and partner of Swimlane, NTT Data has already seen success in attracting new customers of its own. As Schraut explains, “the results so far is actually a 100% win rate. So, whenever we went in with Swimlane, when it came to proof of value – we won. This is very encouraging.”

NTT Data is planning to create unique integrations of the Swimlane platform to deliver continued value to customers. As a new part of its own infrastructure, Swimlane has quickly established itself as a promising system of record for NTT Data’s security analysts.

“Our customers have changing environments. They might change their SIEM system, or email system – for the analysts, it has to be exactly the same system. For us, Swimlane is the main interface that we’re using…and that gives us a great advantage. Not just for us, when we serve our customers, but also for the engineer’s on our customers’ side that have changing environments.”