Problem Area

UK media organisation covering The World Cup in Russia must protect their infrastructure from attack whilst operating in this high-risk cyber environment.

The Challenge

A major UK media organisation covering The World Cup needed to ensure professional and secure delivery of the event coverage, whilst not increasing the risk to the rest of the organisation. They sent 70+ personnel to Russia to cover the event, all with new hardware and a specially designed, but limited, network to operate in. With known threats from Russian hacker groups, they needed a flexible but robust solution that allows them to protect staff and deliver comprehensive coverage of this major sporting event across multiple platforms.

How We Helped

Talion’s Enhanced User Monitoring was deployed across all personnel working in Russia during the World Cup. Enhanced User Monitoring looks at the normal activity of each individual and alerts the SOC to any anomalous or suspicious activity, which is emphasized for analyst review. Talion monitored activity against the specially designed network, but also against the organisations normal network, which these individuals should not have been accessing whilst in Russia.

Outcome/Benefits

Talion’s Enhanced User Monitoring identified several attempts from stolen credentials to access the UK network. It also captured suspicious attempts from users in Russia to access the event network out of hours. The user credentials were quickly locked down, protecting data and information on the event from being stolen.

Talion were able to react to changes quickly, for items such as movement of personnel between the UK and Russia over a three-month period. Changes were made in real time meaning the service maintained an accurate and up to date picture of the people that were in Russia on any given day.

As a result, whilst there were several attempts to access either the UK or Russian networks, none were successful, and the client delivered coverage of the event without incident.