John Shaffer of Greenhill talks about Zero Networks

Summary

Greenhill & Co.’s CIO calls Zero Networks a core part of the firm’s security stack, something it “cannot live without any longer.” John Shaffer explains how agentless microsegmentation made zero trust achievable, how automated policy creation replaced a manual process that left too much open, and how Zero Networks applied MFA to applications that don’t support it out of the box.

Key takeaways

• Firewall-level segmentation is hard to build and maintain. Microsegmentation with Zero Networks made Greenhill’s zero trust journey much more achievable.
• It’s agentless and low impact. Zero Networks was easy to deploy and added value almost immediately.
• Policies take one click. Manual policy creation left things open that shouldn’t have been. With automated policy creation, Greenhill creates policies across an entire segment with one click.
• MFA works on applications that don’t support it. Zero Networks learned how Greenhill used its applications, then applied MFA accurately and quickly to technology the team never thought could have it.

Speaker: John Shaffer, CIO, Greenhill & Co.

Why does Greenhill rely on Zero Networks?

John Shaffer: We’ve been using Zero Networks for a while now. It’s become a core component of our security stack, and it’s something that we cannot live without any longer.

My name is John Shaffer. I’m the CIO for Greenhill and Company. We’re a leading investment bank based out of New York City.

What I love about Zero Networks is that it’s easy, it’s simple, it’s effective, it adds value almost immediately.

How does Zero Networks make zero trust achievable?

John Shaffer: One of the problems with network segmentation, particularly on a network or on a firewall level, is that it’s very difficult to maintain, it’s very difficult to build. Microsegmentation with Zero Networks has made the journey towards zero trust much more achievable. The platform was agentless, made it very easy to deploy in our network. It was a very low impact tool for us to use, with a great deal of value.

How does automated policy creation work?

John Shaffer: One of the things that I really love about Zero Networks is the ability to automate rules in policy creation. Before we went with Zero Networks, policy creation was a very manual process and very difficult to achieve. We ended up leaving a lot of things open that shouldn’t have been open. After bringing in Zero Networks and using automated policy creation, we were able to create new policies across an entire segment with one click.

How can you add MFA to applications that don’t support it?

John Shaffer: We’ve always had a challenge to implement MFA on specific applications that don’t support multi-factor authentication out of the box. One of the things that Zero Networks was able to do for us was to be able to apply MFA to technology we never thought we could do it to, and Zero Networks was able to learn how we used our applications and to implement MFA very accurately and very quickly. And that was something that nobody else could do.