QBE Insurance Strengthens Its Zero Trust Security With IllumioQBE Insurance Strengthens Its Zero Trust Security With Illumio

QBE Insurance Strengthens Its Zero Trust Security With Illumio

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Key benefits

QBE Insurance Strengthens Its Zero Trust Security With Illumio
Fast time to Zero Trust

QBE enforced segmentation for high-value production assets in a matter of months, fulfilling the need to advance its Zero Trust posture quickly.

QBE Insurance Strengthens Its Zero Trust Security With Illumio
Flexibility for the future

Zero Trust Segmentation policies follow workloads wherever they go, giving QBE flexibility as it accelerates its multi-cloud strategy.

QBE Insurance Strengthens Its Zero Trust Security With Illumio
Stronger internal alignment

Illumio fosters collaboration between security and application teams since they can understand and address risks to applications like never before.

QBE Insurance Strengthens Its Zero Trust Security With Illumio

Overview and challenges

With a 135-year history marked by a commitment to customers and innovation, QBE is one of the world’s largest global insurers. As operations span Australia, Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America, the scope and scale of the company’s compute estate continues to expand.

The move to hybrid multi-cloud data centers and an increasingly complex application environment required QBE to think differently about how to protect the organization and its customers.

Further compounded by the rising threat of ransomware in the industry, a Zero Trust approach to security became front of mind for CISO Andrew Dell.

“We have partners inside our network, service providers that are in the cloud, and other networks connected to us,” Dell explained. “So, we need to think differently about controlling access to our data and our applications, how we reduce risk, and what technologies will help get us to a Zero Trust model.”

A focus on Zero Trust meant re-evaluating the company’s segmentation strategy. QBE relied on physical firewalls and virtual firewall appliances for segmentation, which proved to be “labor intensive and complex,” according to Dell.

Firewall rulesets would become almost unmanageable for the team, potentially putting the very applications they were trying to protect at risk.

QBE needed microsegmentation for more efficient, granular control over dynamic environments. Future-proofing the business with a solution that would empower the organization to “go faster, safely” was critical.

How Illumio helped

“We are always looking for simple solutions to complex problems,” said Dell.

He found exactly that in Illumio Core: a software-based microsegmentation solution that eliminates network segmentation headaches and provides the foundation for Zero Trust security — starting with visibility capabilities.

Illumio Core’s real-time application dependency map showing traffic flows between workloads wherever they run delivered quick value.

“The initial attraction was really the simplicity,” recalled Dell. “Having the ability to span the physical and the virtual and present insights in a highly resolved fashion is a game-changer. It enabled us to be more efficient with our resources and planning right away.”

Equipped with the understanding needed to segment confidently, the team set out to tackle “crown jewel” applications first.

According to Nick Venn, global collaboration and cyber infrastructure manager at QBE: “Since Illumio policies are independent of underlying infrastructure, we get greater and granular security and performance. And the best thing is the policy can now follow the workload, so we don’t have to worry about recreating policies or re-architecting the network. That flexibility is absolutely essential.”

These efficiencies translate into years saved for QBE.


“For an organization of our size and scale and complexity, traditionally rolling out an equivalent solution was a multi-year proposition,” said Dell. “But with Illumio, we had production assets enforced and under control in months, fulfilling our need to move faster and further our Zero Trust posture.”

Results and benefits

  • Fast time to Zero Trust
    Default-deny policies that are decoupled from the network enable the team to enforce effective Zero Trust controls quickly — and with confidence, afforded by the ability to test policies before going into enforcement.
  • Future-proofed with flexibility
    No longer limited by traditional constraints, QBE can count on scalable and flexible segmentation for consistent workload security as the organization continues to innovate and accelerate its multi-cloud strategy.
  • Improved operational efficiencies
    By cutting the complexity of managing firewalls for segmentation, QBE has a more effective and efficient solution that gives the team more time to focus on protecting the organization and driving its digital agenda.
  • Stronger internal alignment
    Real-time application insights help security and application teams understand application risks and vulnerabilities and make it easy to collaborate on policy decisions.

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