OVERVIEW

The KNMI (Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute) is widely known for its weather forecasts. The KNMI weather room is on standby 24/7 to warn citizens in the Netherlands of dangerous or extreme weather. It provides advice to the government, port companies, and Schiphol Airport. It also provides data and services to weather providers, such as Buienradar and news programs. eThe KNMI also holds vast amounts of (historical) climate data, dating back to the 17th century, that is run through analytic models.

Because the KNMI delivers open data and there are no personal data that need to be protected, they were one of the first government organizations to move to the public cloud. After the organization migrated to Amazon Web Services (AWS) four years ago, the security of the data needed to be highly protected. In addition, many stakeholders are dependent on the KNMI’s data - including its meteorologist at Schiphol. If the data needed for air traffic was hacked or corrupted, serious consequences could take place. To ensure the safety, availability, and reliability of this data, the KNMI chose Trend Cloud One™ for protection of their data in the AWS cloud.

“Trend Micro focuses broadly on all security aspects of the multi-cloud, not just on one small piece. That’s exactly what the KNMI was looking for. The hosting for our research and its security is very important. Trend presented itself with the Cloud One platform as the best,” said Ekko Huizenga, product owner at the KNMI

BETTER LEADERSHIP

The KNMI likes to keep the control in its own hands. “The company does this consciously to maintain high internal knowledge and expertise, to keep lines of communication between teams short and to make optimal use of the benefits offered by new technological solutions,” said Huizenga. “This also applies to security. By keeping control in its own hands and implementing Trend’s Cloud One solutions as independently as possible, DevOps teams can be better and more actively supported.”

In addition, the KNMI wants to be autonomous and work in a way that allows them to look over the shoulders of employees and guide them if necessary, in a non-invasive manner. “It is important that we can exercise good control over our data. Trend Cloud One fits perfectly with this. In addition, it can be set up tightly and relatively easily rolled out,” said René Joosten, enterprise architect at the KNMI.

"With Trend Micro Cloud One - we can take cloud-independent security measures, in addition to the features provided by our current AWS platform."

GREATER INSIGHT INTO THE CLOUD SECURITY POSTURE

Efficient and good insight into security alerts is important for the KNMI to ensure that their data is always secure and available. “Trend Cloud One – Conformity™ not only provides more insight into the cloud security posture, but also into the entire cloud architecture. This gives us a detailed insight into any misconfigurations, including advice on how to resolve them directly,” says Joosten.

"Trend Micro focuses broadly on all security aspects of multi-cloud, not just one small piece."

FASTER PROTECTION AGAINST THREATS

With Trend Cloud One - Workload Security, the KNMI can protect its environment against both known and unknown threats. The virtual patching technique automatically seals vulnerabilities in workloads.

SOLID SUPPORT

Despite the desire for the KNMI to keep as much control as possible over the implementation of new technology, Trend offered great support. KNMI developers communicated regularly with Trend and actively collaborated on application security and optimizing the use of software solutions. “Trend is always ready to help the customer and come by to assist with problems. The communication is good and runs smoothly. We get the impression of a flat organization and we never feel like we’re at the back of the line,” says Huizenga.

WHAT'S NEXT

KNMI’s next big project with Trend is securing the European Weather Cloud - a collaboration with other European weather services. It would be infrastructure-as-aservice connecting each partner to customize its owns setup. With the positive experience gained from the Trend Cloud One platform, KNMI also intends to expand with Trend Vision One™ in the future as a further investment into the platform and automating more security operations.