Summary:

• Veraset needed an effective and comprehensive way to meet the highest level of security needs for all the data it manages on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Warden helped to discover numerous misconfigurations, accidental changes, and potential security vulnerabilities that would have otherwise gone unnoticed
• Warden’s best-in-class compliance automation and automated remediation allows Veraset to achieve 10x faster compliance audits and evidence collection

Veraset is a a Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) company focused on gathering, curating and delivering the highest quality geospatial data available in the market.  These datasets enrich their customers’ data analytics and provide valuable insights about population movement that fuels better business decisions and innovation. With datasets that represent 10% of the US population and up to 5% of the global population, Veraset needs to continuously meet security and privacy best practices. 

Continuously ensuring best-in-class data security

Veraset prioritizes data reliability and responsible data management over other things such as fast feature iteration. Hence responsibly managing data access and securing their infrastructure is key to the business. As a Data-as-a-Service organization, the reliability and security of their data is everything, which is why Veraset looks to differentiate itself by the way it locks down and secures data.

This does not come easy, by any measure. The sheer amount of terabytes of data spread over its array of data analytics and computation tools alone presents a big challenge in data governance. Part of this data governance is the secure management of its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud environment. 

Turning to Warden CSPM to accelerate cloud compliance

When Vinoo Ganesh, CTO of Veraset, was introduced to Warden and its Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) capabilities, it was easy to see how Warden’s compliance automation and out-of-the-box rulesets were able to help Veraset achieve its security and privacy objectives quickly and comprehensively.

“One of the things that surprised me was the diversity of useful features available on Warden, from its large compliance library and one-click remediation to its report generation and comprehensive dashboards. This helps us respond to cloud threats faster. With GDPR and ISO 27001 compliance supported, we have access to a live dashboard that shows how close we are to achieving compliance on those standards, which we think is super powerful.”, said Vinoo.

80% reduced IaaS security risks for a stronger cloud security baseline

Once Warden was connected to Veraset’s AWS account, an automated scan revealed a number of potential vulnerabilities. At the same time, the one-click-remediation allowed Veraset to quickly action these issues and fix them from the get-to.  Furthermore, as scans are run on a frequent basis, Veraset can remain at the cutting edge of ensuring a secure stack.

From enabling VPC flow logs and MFA Delete on S3 to incident detection, Warden helped Veraset drastically reduce the effort needed to stay aligned with security best practices on AWS. Warden also helps the security team to discern the critical actions to take from the deluge of security alerts they get everyday. With Warden, the team can now confidently build and customize their cloud infrastructure without having to worry about new threats.

As Veraset continues developing, it is focusing on infrastructure-as-code solutions to manage its infrastructure. After providing this feedback, the Warden product team was able to build in integrations and recommendations with terraform. This resulted in not only easier management overall, but also a powerful way to version control changes on the stack.