Unéo is a specialist French affinity mutual insurer, registered with the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. The second-largest player in its sector, it has 500,000 members, 95% of them serving or retired military personnel. Present throughout France, its head office is located in Montrouge, in the Ile-de-France region. Unéo’s IT structure comprises 250 servers for 800 workstations, and the IT teams are divided between the ISS and operational departments.
Zero-trust protection on all workstations
URL filtering
Data backup on datacenters in France, with compliance for the European Union
Access: Access to SaaS applications without additional connection
Transparency: Transparency in data traffics
Experience: Enhanced user experience
With the widespread adoption of teleworking within its organization, Unéo faced new challenges in protecting workstations and remote access. Initially, the company had URL filtering at firewall level, but no proxification or cloud-based security gateway. A solution therefore had to be found to provide the same filtering and protection rules from any connection location for access to the network and data, taking telecommuting into account. At the same time, it also became necessary to replace the existing VPN to protect workstation access from anywhere. To solve these problems, Unéo turned to Netskope’s zero-trust solution, NPA (Netskope Private Access).
Given the criticality of the data on the company network, Unéo needed to manage different user behaviors and the associated potential risks, to avoid any information leakage. In addition, as a member of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, for which security is a priority, it was important for the mutual to find a way of protecting its data in French datacenters, with a tolerance for the European Union, in order to best comply with regulations and protect its customers; conditions which Netskope was able to meet.
Netskope’s solution enables seamless use wherever you are, while accessing tools without a special connection, providing improved access protection and user experience compared with a VPN.
In light of these issues, Unéo turned to Newlode, who recommended Netskope’s NPA solution as the most appropriate to meet their security needs. The company required rapid deployment to secure all workstations with appropriate settings. However, for best results, Unéo opted for a gradual implementation to manage potential pitfalls, deploy full functionality and ensure the solution’s longevity. Given the absence of difficulties, development accelerated.
This speed was made possible by efficient remote support from Netskope and Newlode, who efficiently guided Unéo’s teams through the process, including the proof of concept (POC) and the purchase of the solution.
The deployment of Netskope on all Unéo workstations was carried out in two stages: URL filtering, which took place in November 2021; then the full implementation of NPA. The teams are now fully satisfied with this VPN replacement. In addition, 95% of Unéo’s connection traces are stored in datacenters located in Paris and Marseille, and 5% in the European Union. ZTNA not only provides a modern security framework, but also enhances the user experience with seamless connectivity to Unéo’s resources, responding to the challenges of teleworking and the cloud.
Netskope’s solution has enabled Unéo to meet their data protection needs, with the fewest possible constraints for employees. Indeed, they can connect and access all the applications they need for their professional activities, without any additional handling, thus benefiting from an enhanced experience. This capability was essential for Unéo, which did not want to make data protection an obstacle for its employees.
This simplicity is also accompanied by a high level of transparency, so that employees and IT teams can be fully confident about their behavior and the risks they run. Every action is recorded and known by the security teams, who can then easily act accordingly, with simple management of alerts, monitoring and reporting. This is particularly true of the principle of least privilege, which automatically allocates access rights to users, for the applications and data they need.
The relationship established with Netskope contributed greatly to the success of this project with Unéo. The teams are satisfied with the monitoring and fine analysis provided by the Netskope experts, who report the results every month and offer the mutual company prospects for improvement. This close relationship enables us to make the most of Netskope, and to envisage greater use of the solution, with the addition of other functionalities currently under study with Unéo.