The KNMI (Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute)
Modernises its IT environment in AWS with Trend Micro
OVERVIEW
The KNMI 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. The KNMI also holds vast amounts of historical climate data dating back to the 17th century and processed through analytic models.
Industry
Government
IT Environment
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Public Cloud
Region
Netherlands
Solutions
CHALLENGES
Because the KNMI delivers open data, they were one of the first government organisations to move to the public cloud. After the organisation migrated to AWS four years ago, the security of that 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 compromised or corrupted, serious consequences could take place. To ensure the safety, availability, and reliability of this data, the KNMI chose Trend cloud security for protection of their data in the AWS cloud.
“Trend 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,” says Product Owner at the KNMI, Ekko Huizenga. “The hosting for our research and its security is very important. Trend presented itself with [their cloud security solution] as the best.”
[Trend ASRM for cloud] provides us with information on compliance, and we can use it for both our own cloud environment within AWS and the European Weather Cloud.
Ekko Huizenga
Product Owner at the KNMI
WHY TREND
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. This also applies to security. “By keeping control in its own hands and implementing Trend’s [cloud security] solutions as independently as possible, DevOps teams can be better and more actively supported,” says Huizenga.
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 noninvasive manner. “It is important that we can exercise good control over our data,” says Enterprise Architect at the KNMI, René Joosten. “[Trend cloud security] fits perfectly with this. In addition, it can be set up tightly and relatively easily rolled out.”
[Trend cloud security] is an excellent solution for our teams. It’s easy to set up and you have good control over it.
René Joosten
Enterprise Architect at KNMI
SOLUTION
Efficient and good insight into security alerts is important for the KNMI to ensure that their data is always secure and available. [Trend attack surface risk management for cloud] not only provides more insight into the cloud security posture, but also into the entire cloud architecture,” says Joosten. “This gives us a detailed insight into any misconfigurations, including advice on how to resolve them directly.”
With Trend endpoint security, the KNMI can protect its environment against both known and unknown threats. The virtual patching technique automatically seals vulnerabilities in workloads.
RESULTS
Despite the desire for the KNMI to keep as much control as possible over the implementation of new technology, Trend offered great support. The KNMI’s developers communicated regularly with Trend and actively collaborated on application security and optimising 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,” says Huizenga. “We get the impression of a flat organisation and we never feel like we’re at the back of the line.”
WHAT'S NEXT
The KNMI’s next major project with Trend involves securing the European Weather Cloud—a collaborative effort with other European weather services. This initiative aims to provide infrastructure-as-a-service, allowing each partner to customise its own setup.
Building on the positive experience with the Trend cloud security solution, the KNMI plans to expand its use of the platform by implementing Trend Vision One™ in the future. This move represents a further investment in the platform and aims to automate more security operations.
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