PKI Spotlight Helps Credit Union Monitor Security System, Demonstrate Compliance During Audits

It’s always rewarding when you can introduce a long-standing customer to a new technology product that will really make a difference for their organization. And, it’s a bonus when it’s our own product: PKI Spotlight. Recently, we worked with BayPort Credit Union to implement PKI Spotlight to provide real-time monitoring and alerting of the availability, configuration, and security of their organization’s PKI environment. BayPort Credit Union, headquartered in Newport News, Virginia, manages more than $2.2 billion in assets and serves nearly 148,000 credit union members throughout the Virginia Peninsula, Southside, and surrounding coastal communities.

I’ve worked with Scott Fales, principal network engineer at BayPort Credit Union, for several years. In fact, we designed and implemented their original PKI and have continued to work with them to protect BayPort Credit Union from ransomware attacks, data breaches, and other cyberattacks. When we first showed him PKI Spotlight, he immediately saw the benefit of the real-time monitoring and alerting functionality. He also quickly realized that he could leverage PKI Spotlight’s reporting functionality to provide time-saving assistance and reports demonstrating compliance during the periodic financial audits that are common in the banking industry. I wanted to share their story with you in case you have a similar need with your organization.

One of the unique things about our work with BayPort Credit Union was the fact that they had recently rolled out new Interactive Teller Machines (ITMs) to replace its current network of ATMs. Now, with these new ITMs, the credit union’s need for highly secure traffic between the ITMs and the central server is more critical than ever before. All of the credit union’s ATMs/ITMs need to have assigned certificates and those ATMs/ITMs have to trust the central ATM/ITM server. These certificates, which need to be carefully monitored, are used to encrypt traffic between the ATMs/ITMs and the credit union’s main banking system. Those reports on the PKI environment are important to the day-to-day business of the bank.

These new ITMs include more functionality and feature video screens which allow users to talk with someone back at their call center which means that BayPort must ensure that they have highly secure communications between the ITMs and their central server to protect their customers’ data and privacy.

Following the implementation of PKI Spotlight, Scott told us that not only does PKI Spotlight give him better peace of mind that everything is working as it should in his PKI environment but he also has an even greater understanding of the importance of PKI as the foundation for cybersecurity systems everywhere. Scott said, “PKI is becoming a requirement for every piece of software. For example, we need to have certificates installed on the server for all of our internal applications. All of our firewall traffic has to have certificates now to be able to decrypt and monitor traffic so that we can check it before it gets to the end user. The certificates in the PKI are only becoming more widespread over time as more and more certificates are required everywhere.”

We couldn’t agree more!

You can read more about this customer case study here. Also, if you request a demo of PKI Spotlight by Friday, August 5, you can get special promotional pricing on PKI Spotlight. Please request a demo at pkispotlight.com.