OTE: High-level Protection for Sensitive Data

Complex and confidential business-relevant data require special security measures. That’s why INTERAMERICAN, member of the ACHMEA Group and one of the leading insurance companies in Greece, asked our subsidiary OTE for an equally complex security solution against DDoS attacks amongst others for its critical information infrastructure.

From Trojan malware to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, there are countless ways to steal or manipulate sensitive data. The insurance company INTERAMERICAN could suffer daily attacks from the endless depths of the internet. It looked for help from the Information Security Services Unit of our subsidiary in Greece, OTE. INTERAMERICAN already had an excellent business relationship with OTE, using it for fixed and mobile services at all Interamerican Group companies. They agreed to expand their cooperation with OTE after being guaranteed 100-percent coverage of their needs, on a 24/7 basis. The goal for both our client and OTE is to alleviate the pressure INTERAMERICAN faces daily related to information security, such as targeted malware, customer data theft, skills shortages and resource constraints.

The solutions implemented at the headquarters’ main data centre in Athens which hosts all critical infrastructure. They detect weaknesses that can be exploited by malicious attacks, and are provided through specialized services of Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing, concerning both the network and applications. Moreover, OTE ensures the protection of INTERAMERICAN’s infrastructure from DDoS attacks. For this purpose, they are using a modern integrated security platform that only providers of telecom services, such as OTE, may offer. It handles DDoS attacks by terminating invalid traffic to the provider core before reaching the customer’s system access points.

Additionally, the insurance company is able to monitor its critical information systems infrastructure via OTE Managed Security Services. Provided by the Security Operations Centre (SOC, certified according to ISO 27001), OTE is in charge of monitoring crucial infrastructure 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. After any indication of a possible security incident – a problem in information flow, unauthorized access or any other malfunction – the SOC engineers immediately analyse the situation in real time before informing the company in the most effective way: via SMS, email, the web portal or even by phone. They then propose the necessary measures for handling the situation. Additionally, INTERAMERICAN has been provided with management tools that enable them to have, at any time, a full overview of the security situation of their critical infrastructure through OTE’s Managed Security Services Web Portal.

In a nutshell: With the help of OTE, INTERAMERICAN can now effectively protect its infrastructure from potentially devastating attacks, while significantly minimizing infrastructure and personnel costs.

Hear what Nikos Maroulianakis, Infrastructure & Enterprise Data Manager at INTERAMERICAN, says about working with OTE: “After being guaranteed 100-percent coverage of our needs on a 24/7 basis, we decided to expand our existing excellent cooperation with OTE. We signed a three-year contract to alleviate the pressures we face daily related to information security, such as targeted malware, customer data theft, skills shortages and resource constraints.”

Read more about OTE: https://www.ote.gr