Video

Atlantic Constructors’ IT Director on Zero Networks Segmentation and Remote Access

Jim Paolicelli, IT Director at Atlantic Constructors, Inc. (ACI), discusses the positive impact of implementing Zero Networks in their organization.

Mr. Paolicelli highlights how Zero Networks has transformed their approach to cybersecurity, with users expressing satisfaction with the product—a rarity in IT. He emphasizes the ease of implementation and effectiveness of Zero Networks, particularly in whitelisting and microsegmentation, which were previously lacking in their cybersecurity measures.

Paolicelli describes how Zero Networks has streamlined their network security processes, freeing up resources and providing peace of mind through its comprehensive protection against attacks like ransomware.

Additionally, he praises the introduction of Secure Remote Access through Zero Networks, which has significantly improved performance and reliability while simplifying the user experience. Overall, ACI agrees that Zero Networks is a game-changing solution that has greatly enhanced their cybersecurity posture and operational efficiency.

Summary

Atlantic Constructors, a manufacturing, construction, and HVAC company of just over 1,000 people, needed allowlisting and microsegmentation to meet cyber insurance requirements but found other products too intensive to implement. IT Director Jim Paolicelli says Zero Networks was running within 10 to 15 minutes of starting a proof of concept, immediately discovered connections the team didn’t know about, and freed up a full team member’s worth of configuration and monitoring work. In a pen test after deployment, testers couldn’t reach a single protected machine, and replacing several legacy VPNs with Zero Networks Secure Remote Access roughly doubled performance.

Key takeaways

Cyber insurers increasingly require allowlisting and microsegmentation. Atlantic Constructors had neither before Zero Networks.
Zero Networks was up and running within 10 to 15 minutes of starting the proof of concept and immediately surfaced connections the team didn’t know existed.
Blocking unnecessary connections is automated, which freed one IT team member to move to other work.
In a post-deployment pen test, including a ransomware simulation, testers couldn’t penetrate a single protected machine until the team added a rule to let them through.
Replacing several legacy VPNs with Zero Networks Secure Remote Access roughly doubled performance in speed tests and improved reliability.

This video was published in February 2024.

[00:00] Jim Paolicelli, IT Director, Atlantic Constructors: Normally in IT, you only hear complaints. This is probably the first product where users have ever come to me and said they’re happy with it.

Why did Atlantic Constructors need microsegmentation?

[00:18] My name is Jim Paolicelli, and I’m the IT director at Atlantic Constructors. Atlantic Constructors is a manufacturing, construction, and HVAC company of a little over a thousand people. Whitelisting and microsegmentation are becoming more and more of a requirement for cyber insurance companies, and we didn’t have anything like that before we looked at [Zero Networks]. A lot of the products we looked at were whitelisting-based, and the implementation was pretty intense.

How quickly did Zero Networks deploy?

[00:48] When I saw [Zero Networks], I had to see it to believe it, because compared to the rest of the products we were looking at, it looked too easy to be true. But it was as good as they said. We did a POC, and the product was up and running in, I don’t know, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. It just worked right away. It was pretty amazing to see all of the things it was discovering that we didn’t even know about.

How much time does Zero Networks save the IT team?

[01:18] Zero Networks allowed us to dig deep into all of the devices on our network and basically just say, “This doesn’t need to connect, so it’s not connecting.” If we tried to do that without Zero Networks, we’d spend a good majority of our time on the machines doing configuration and monitoring.

[01:41] This literally takes a person out of my department. Zero Networks lets that person move to another area, because they don’t have to worry about that anymore. Most of the time I go in there just for fun, to see what’s happening. It really gives me peace of mind knowing that it’s out there doing its thing.

What happened in a pen test after deploying Zero Networks?

[02:05] After we got [Zero Networks], I decided to run another pen test just to see how things were working, and we literally could not penetrate one of the machines we were testing. We were running a ransomware attack test, basically to test our EDR, and I actually had to create a rule to stop [Zero Networks] from doing its thing so we could get to those machines. So it was pretty amazing. It was a little irritating, in a good way, because I knew [Zero Networks] was doing its thing.

How does Secure Remote Access compare to legacy VPNs?

[02:36] One of the new features we’ve implemented over the past year is Secure Remote Access through Zero Networks. It replaced several of our legacy VPN products, and since we migrated, it’s been nothing but terrific. We’ve moved all of our users over. We did some speed tests, and the performance probably doubled. The reliability went up 100%. And the simplicity of it makes it a no-brainer: you basically just log in and it’s done. It’s set it and forget it at this point. It’s pretty incredible.