DIMENSIONAL FUND ADVISORS (DFA)
EndPoint Security Hardening
DIMENSIONAL FUND ADVISORS (DFA)
EndPoint Security Hardening
OVERVIEW
- Dimensional Fund Advisors L.P. is an investment firm headquartered in Austin, Texas, United States. It offers over 100 equity and fixed income mutual funds.
- DFA was interested in modernizing the Desktop computing environment to the latest Microsoft Technology stack for all employees.
- Most of our financial customers’ productivity and security are paramount to ensure the business can operate effectively.
- Additionally, the company was embracing more mobility challenges for employees and counterparties to be able to provide access and data exchange securely and needed a solution devised to address the growing mobile workforce.
- People Tech assisted DFA in developing and building a modern workplace by designing, implementing, and deploying Windows 10. We also provided EndPoint Security Hardening.
SOLUTION PROVIDED BY PEOPLE TECH GROUP
- The project was split into multiple phases to align with the efficiency and security goals of the new modern workplace.
- People Tech provided a review of Microsoft best practices for both EndPoint and Mobile device Security hardening solutions.
- The requirements were carefully reviewed with the Chief Security Officer and constituents to ensure that all regulatory requirements would be satisfied for PCI, SaaS 70, SOX, etc.
- The solution design was aimed at providing the most secure Windows client experience for financial Institutions while following Microsoft best practices.
- The solution consisted of using Microsoft solution accelerators and group policy to design a set of security policies to meet all regulatory compliance needs.
BENEFITS
- Extensive testing was done against different applications as Security policies were applied.
- This process was repeated over and over to ensure that each Security policy was optimized for the user experience.
- Once all testing was completed and Application and Website compatibility was certified, the solution was gradually rolled out to each department of the business and any issues resolved quickly without bypassing or turning off key security policies required for the client.
- With the implementation of Windows 10 and the robust security tools, DFA is in a great position to eliminate the costly migrations from what used to be Windows 7, and upgrade with Windows 10 in a more cost-efficient manner.
- DFA was also able to reduce their average imaging time from 6 hours to 2.
- People Tech significantly reduced the number of manual tasks that imaging techs are required to complete, and improved handling of common scenarios that would cause failures in their previous process.