The relevance of cybersecurity is constantly increasing in the advancing digital world. Operators of critical infrastructures in particular, need primary protection against malicious attacks and have special requirements with regard to their security standards. If an energy supply company were to fall victim to an attack and a city suddenly had to do without electricity – the consequences would be fatal. Due to this, early detection of issues or misconfigurations in the attack surface is important in order to be able to eliminate sources of danger in advance and to ensure the functioning of society.
Why Sibelga implemented attack surface management in their organization
That is why it was important for Sibelga, the only distribution network operator for electricity and natural gas in the 19 municipalities of the Brussels Capital Region, to tighten its in-house cybersecurity. The energy supply company advises its customers, reads meters and manages consumer data. For this reason, the company was very concerned to protect this sensitive customer data from third parties and to make an attack on the internal network as difficult as possible. In short: A secure and cyber resilient energy supply was to be guaranteed. Peter Van Lierde, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Sibelga comments:
"The issue I encountered was a lack of visibility. From a security point of view, not knowing what you have somewhere on the internet and what its status is - both from a technical and regulatory point of view - is like a blind man driving towards a big wall."
To be able to track all their internet-facing assets and make their online infrastructure as lean and agile as possible, Sibelga was looking for a continuous monitoring solution to include in their cybersecurity activities and decided to use the Sweepatic Platform.
Peter Van Lierde: "We choose Sweepatic as a result of a public tender in which we contacted 7 companies. Based on the answers we received, we evaluated that the offer proposed by Sweepatic gave us the best value for money for mitigating the risks we faced."
Prevent cyber attacks with the Sweepatic Attack Surface Management Platform
The first step in protecting organizations from cyber attacks, is to review the attack surface and keep it structured and organized. Sweepatic’s External Attack Surface Management Platform lists and prioritizes security issues, weaknesses, vulnerable entry points and misconfigurations, enabling targeted tracking of possible attack paths. By mapping, monitoring and managing the attack surface of organizations, the Sweepatic Platform provides a dataset of all internet-facing assets, an intelligence layer with security insights and recommendations, and a representation layer in an easy-to-use dashboard.
The Sibelga team uses the intuitive dashboard for reporting and benefits from the completeness of the collected data and the daily update rate of the Sweepatic solution. As a result, potential security vulnerabilities can be identified and remediated at an early stage and possible cyber attacks can be prevented. With this attack surface management solution built in Sibelga’s cybersecurity system, the company gains more visibility and a centralized view on all their internet-facing assets.
Peter Van Lierde: "Since we started using the Sweepatic Platform, we are able to mitigate threats we were not aware of. Both on a technical level - due to wrong configurations - and on a regulatory level - for example cookie compliancy on our websites."
Sibelga is very satistied with the customer support Sweepatic offers:
"We like Sweepatic's agility. Whenever we have an issue with the tool or if something is missing for our specific environment, the Sweepatic team will do their best to provide us those needed features ASAP. They also listen to their customers to see what needs they have and continuously try to improve their services."