A global leader in the design, engineering and manufacturing of construction products, Simpson Strong-Tie and the builders that rely on their solutions cannot afford downtime and costly project delays. Spanning more than 70 offices worldwide and thousands of patents and trademarks, the manufacturing powerhouse is a prime target for cyber criminals.

"For years, it seemed as though the manufacturing and construction industry was ‘immune’ to cyber attacks; that is no longer the case,” said John Meng, VP of IT Operations and Infrastructure at Simpson Strong-Tie. “The bad actors know that the exposure of cyberattacks in our industry is exacerbated by the amount of confidential and proprietary information digitally stored and shared across projects and long information technology chains.”

“Infrastructure, financial accounts, business sensitive information, and data from employees and projects may be at risk,” Meng continued. “That’s why Simpson Strong-Tie prioritized data security and cyber resilience in partnership with Rubrik.”

Rubrik Stands as the Last Line of Defense in Simpson’s Cyber Resilience Arsenal

"The need for data security and cyber resilience in today's landscape has turned the IT world upside down. Your traditional disaster recovery solutions do not apply today. It was clear that our previous backup solution was not equipped to face the growing cyber threats staring at us in the face," said Meng. 

Recognizing the need for a complete data security solution, Simpson Strong-Tie turned to Rubrik, a partnership that has proven instrumental in their digital transformation journey. With multiple petabytes of data across on-prem, cloud, SaaS, and edge locations, Rubrik's complete cyber-resilience offerings, including immutable backups, Anomaly Detection, Threat Hunting, and Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), have become the bedrock of Simpson's cybersecurity strategy. 

"We are in a new age that requires us to rethink data security. Rubrik is a clear leader in the digital protection and cyber resilience spaces as both a strategic partner and next-gen solution to help us prepare for and bounce back from a cyber attack that we all know is coming," said Meng.

Simpson Strong-Tie utilizes Anomaly Detection to identify unusual activity and get a clear forensic analysis of an attack’s blast radius/scope. Coupled with Threat Hunting to uncover malware and avoid reinfection, Rubrik gives the Simpson Digital team confidence and assurance to quickly and safely recover. With Rubrik, Simpson Strong-Tie has been able to detect anomalies early and proactively remediate potential incidents from escalating.

Staying Ahead of the Curve with Rubrik Security Cloud

A cloud-first organization, Simpson’s critical workloads live in Azure and Microsoft 365. The company initially relied on Azure-native backups, but realized that Rubrik’s ability to test restores, verify backups, and hunt for threats across multiple cloud platforms through one unified solution, Cloud-Native Protection, was a game-changer.

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), in particular, provides visibility into the sprawling sensitive data across Simpson’s expansive cloud environment. “Prior to deploying Rubrik DSPM, it was very difficult to quickly identify and accurately classify servers and folders that require special security properties,” continued Meng. “Rubrik gives us seamless visibility across our entire landscape, which in turn, helps us build a proactive action plan to remediate these potential risks, specifically around unstructured data in the cloud.”

The same visibility and control is exercised across the organization’s on-prem data with Sensitive Data Monitoring, enabling the team to block access or isolate user permissions to sensitive data.

“Historically, cybersecurity has not been top-of-mind for the manufacturing and construction industry — in large part because we were not subject to heavy regulations in data security and privacy laws. However, as new technologies like machine learning and robotics are employed, they require data security and privacy risk assessments and proper controls in place,” said Meng. “The industry as a whole is undergoing a digital transformation journey and we are committed to staying ahead of the curve.”