Bank Lviv continues the strategic development of the IT infrastructure, focusing on the speed and fault tolerance of services, security and performance.
Last year, Bank Lviv celebrated its 30th anniversary under the motto “30 years of discoveries”, which became the logical embodiment of the development strategy and focus on the innovativeness of the financial institution.
The digital transformation program moved according to plan until the lockdown was introduced in the country. Due to the fact that digital transformation, the development of self-service services, and online banking were an integral part of the company’s growth strategy in pre-quarantine times, the bank was able to quickly reformat its IT landscape and begin upgrading its IT infrastructure in areas that were critical at that time.
In order to improve performance and ensure fault tolerance of the bank’s network, as well as to protect its perimeter, the bank started upgrading its WAN with migration to new equipment. In particular, the bank chose Cisco Firepower 2130 firewalls and ISR1001-X routers.
One of the key tasks, long overdue before the corona crisis, was the strengthening of information security, among other things, it was necessary to provide more secure access to the Internet. This task was implemented using Cisco WSA and Cisco Umbrella services, and email protection was implemented based on the Cisco ESA solution.
Cisco Umbrella has provided the first line of defense for users against online threats. In addition, the solution protected users from malware from the perimeter to the endpoints.
To protect web traffic and comprehensive control, the project provided for the installation of the software and hardware complex Cisco Web Security Appliance (WSA). D Due to the functionality of traffic inspection by two independent systems: a scanning proxy server (Secure Web Proxy) and an all-port traffic monitor of the 4th level (L4 Traffic Monitor), it can be argued that the bank has a high level of web traffic security.
The issue of e-mail protection was solved using the Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA), which is a software and hardware complex that allows not only to protect the corporate mailer from spam and malware, but also to ensure integrity, confidentiality, marking and protection from substitutions.
Partially remote, and sometimes completely remote work due to quarantine restrictions, forced the bank’s management to resolve issues of organizing secure VPN access for employees very quickly. To solve this problem, the bank chose a leading solution in the area of Cisco AnyConnect, which provided secure access to the corporate network regardless of the time, location and device from which the connection is made.
Cisco AnyConnect is an agent for remote connection, or rather an application installed on the end device that controls the protection of the network perimeter, checks the user environment for compliance with corporate information security policies, checks how the device trying to connect to the network is protected and updated to the current software version, as well as the relevance of signature bases and security of connection to corporate resources.
Yaroslav Baik, Head of IT at Lviv Bank: “Constantly improving and making new discoveries is the principle of our bank’s activity. Of course, the corona crisis made certain adjustments to our technological development plan, but globally we did not have to deviate from the previously outlined strategy. So, the development of security systems and remote access for employees have become a logical continuation on the way to the digital transformation of Bank Lviv. As for the choice of equipment manufacturer, the Cisco solution has become a well-balanced addition to the existing IT infrastructure of the bank, proving its performance and security for several years already”.
Dmytro Zhukovskyi, Director of Information Technology Department at IT-Integrator: “Implementation of integrated solutions to ensure cybersecurity is a complex but important process, in addition to a direct functional effect, which additionally improves the quality of services provided by the bank and its competitiveness. During the implementation of the project, we managed to build effective interaction with Bank Lviv, the customer was confident in our competencies and the high quality of the solutions of the chosen manufacturer, which allowed the bank to both significantly increase the level of cybersecurity and significantly improve the knowledge and experience of its specialists, thanks to the high level of qualification of specialists involved in the project from both parties, its maximum possible efficiency was achieved.
