OVERVIEW

URUS Group was established to meet the needs of dairy farmers and beef farmers worldwide. As a holding company with cooperative and private owners, URUS Group connects renowned organizations such as Alta Genetics, GENEX, Jetstream Genetics, PEAK, SCCL, and VAS. Each of these organizations has its own identity and unique products and services. These companies provide cutting-edge genetics for genetic progress, tailor-made livestock reproduction services, and sophisticated livestock management software and services.

"We have minimal management, so Trend Micro Apex Central offers a real-time overview of the complete client environment, at all times."

"With Trend Micro Safe Lock we can continue to use our human interface machines in a safe manner and without major risks."

SOLUTION

Trend Micro Apex One was ready for installation in 2019. However, URUS saw the number of ransomware attacks rapidly increase worldwide and decided to speed up the installation of Trend Micro Apex One to ensure they were sufficiently prepared.

URUS uses Trend Micro Apex One to protect all endpoints, including clients, laptops, and the Microsoft® Windows® servers in Azure and on-premises. “It is a great advantage for us that we can control everything centrally from the cloud, both from our private cloud and from Azure”. Nijboer also saves time with patching without having to compromise on security. “With Trend Micro Apex One, patches are automatically planned and rolled out, and zero-day risks are also closed immediately. In addition, virtual patching prevents us from running risks because a supplier does not deliver patches on time. So we know for sure that we are optimally secured”. With the addition of Trend Micro Apex Central, which acts as the dashboard of Trend Micro Apex One, Nijboer now benefits from direct insight into possible vulnerabilities within his organization.

RESULTS

With Trend Micro Apex One, URUS has the ability to apply policies centrally and roll out adjustments in one go.  “We have minimal management efforts and Trend Micro Apex Central offers an up-to-date overview of the complete client environment at all times”, says Nijboer. “Previously, management was divided by region. Now we can apply and adjust policies centrally, and patches are immediately widely rolled out. We use nine policies, and if there is a new client, we link the correct policy to it. This way we can be sure that all clients comply with the policy that we have set up for this”.

Due to their success using Trend Micro Apex One the Netherlands and Canada, URUS has made the decision to expand the solution across their environments in the US.

To protect their servers and lab equipment, URUS decided to deploy Workload Security. “This was a new solution for us. Together with Trend Micro, we have set up a dashboard and rolled it out on the servers for Microsoft 365 and our ERP system, among others. We immediately had better insight into the functioning of the servers. Through indepth analysis, we can now see whether there are vulnerabilities, but also, for example, unauthorized connections between servers”.

Application controls and virtual patching have given URUS more control over security, while the use of machine learning also offers predictive options. “With Workload Security, we not only have a good overview of all communication in the network, but also at server level. The ® dashboard provides insight into everything that is happening, and what applies to the clients now also applies to the servers”.

In addition, Nijboer is pleased by the fact that Trend Micro has made Workload Security also available for AWS, opening doors for URUS to work across multiple cloud platforms without having to organize their security differently. “We therefore maintain maximum control over the security of our entire environment. We can effectively monitor all signals via the central dashboard. Moreover, the rollout and patching is fully automated based on policies. This allows us to fully concentrate on our core tasks and to continue to grow flexibly, while security automatically grows.”