PGP Glass needs strong enterprise security to keep valuable intellectual property protected

PGP Glass, a Blackstone portfolio company, is a global leader in the design, decoration, and production of premium glass packaging solutions. With a footprint spanning India and Sri Lanka, and serving 17 of the top 20 global brands, their 12 furnaces and 65 production lines are dedicated to crafting exceptional glass that elevates brands worldwide.

The company holds a treasure trove of sensitive Intellectual Property (IP), such as documentation for making glass molds and customer design files. Over the last few years, digital solutions, devices, and users proliferated in the organization across business functions, increasing the number of users and devices by 60%. IP is the company’s competitive advantage, so a stronger and resilient security posture is critical to prevent data leakage and exfiltration by both insiders and external threat actors.

PGP Glass had an antivirus software, along with an endpoint detection and response (EDR) tool scanning its IT network, but it lacked the ability to scan operational technology (OT) and IoT devices and extract detailed insights. Due to design limitations, many of the company’s OT systems ran on legacy versions of Windows with no visibility into whether the antivirus software was truly effective on these systems or not.

In addition to those concerns, the company needed to ensure that real-time, reliable data was fed into its energy optimization model, which could use AI and ML to improve efficiency and reduce waste in manufacturing processes.

Armis from ServiceNow helps to increase visibility and security across the network

Armis from ServiceNow was rolled out in phases across one plant at a time in India, providing AI-powered asset intelligence to secure all connected devices. The deployment was eventually expanded to manufacturing facilities in Sri Lanka. The Armis platform is now part of a holistic ecosystem of technology that feeds into the company’s unified energy monitoring system (UEMS) and real-time manufacturing intelligence (RTMI) system to gain control across all cyber assets.

The system collects data from 10,000 sensors that monitor everything from water in the borewell to the energy in the pit and furnaces. This and other OT data from programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and scanners flows into Armis, and then into other tools and systems such as the EDR solution, and then the security information and event management (SIEM) solution. Armis is able to discover and derive data on external temporary devices, for example mobile phones used by executives and visitors, that connect to the corporate network.

Armis supplied the critical missing piece in the company’s technology ecosystem: OT data, such as sensor data getting ingested through different integration points including SAP and IoT systems. Since Armis also performs asset management and functions as a configuration management database (CMDB) for all types of devices, including IT and mobile, PGP Glass will be able to sunset other now redundant tools from its network.

PGP Glass has also started to use Armis to discover, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities in both OT devices and mobile phones. Once integration with the company’s SIEM is complete, the team will be able to better navigate the sea of alerts, gain greater insights into device security status, and automate remediation processes.

Reliable real-time data from Armis improves production and energy efficiency

Armis has greatly improved the situational awareness of all assets connected to the network across the ecosystem and boosted its overall security posture, providing visibility into compliance and patching status of OT systems and Microsoft Window devices. The Armis data flowing from the sensors, gateways, and other OT sources is clean and reliable. This ensures the UEMS and RTMI modules can run properly with the right frequency and volume.

As the team at PGP Glass deepens its familiarity with the Armis dashboards, they are looking at how they can expand the platform across IT as well. Future plans include full adoption of Armis worldwide beyond manufacturing locations to branch offices and even partner sites.

"We are building reliable AI models on reliable data,” shares Sudip Mazumder, Global Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO) of PGP Glass. “That is where Armis is doing its work to ensure the devices are visible and operational parameters are visible, which provides us data reliability. We save USD$2 million equivalent each year through our AI / ML models based on the reliable data from operations. Hence, it is so important for us to have both the IT and the OT network running properly and securely.”