PLDT picks Gigamon to protect 71 million customers in the Philippines

PLDT has engaged Gigamon to to provide the Philippines’ largest telecommunications company and its 71 million users with secure and uninterrupted internet and telecom services.

PLDT recognized the need to gain 100% visibility into its large and highly decentralised environment, with 400,000 assets scattered across the Philippines and beyond, including the requirement to maintain compliance with multiple regulations requiring uninterrupted and secure services.

Angel Redoble, CISO for PLDT Group and its subsidiary Smart Telecom, said that having deep observability into their infrastructure has always been the foundation of their cybersecurity strategy since they cannot protect something that is not visible.

“While the team considered other solutions, we found Gigamon most suitable to our needs,” said Redoble. “What we can see we are able to secure, enabling us to do a better job of protecting and securing our users and services while achieving sustainable revenue growth.”

Other benefits include having visibility into all traffic traversing the network layer; securing and delivering uninterrupted internet and telecom services, and ultimately enabling sustainable revenue growth.

PLDT has multiple regulators, under whose scope the company must continuously secure and protect its infrastructure to prevent service interruptions. Redoble says, 

“Gigamon has reduced the organisation’s risks to the lowest level possible, thanks to its ability to provide us with deep observability into our infrastructure,” said Redoble. “Gigamon technology is playing an important role in keeping our community protected.”

To achieve pervasive visibility, Redoble and his team deployed network test, terminal, or TAPs and aggregators across its entire infrastructure, along with GigaVUE H Series and GigaVUE-FM. 

The network TAP technology provides access to the traffic required to secure, monitor, and manage the network infrastructure continuously and efficiently.

“Visibility and security are synonymous and are directly tied to our revenue growth,” said Redoble. “This deep observability allows us to look into all network traffic to assure security and compliance, enabling us do a better job of protecting and securing our users and services so that we can focus on the sustainable growth of our revenue.”

Another key benefit is the ability to provide continuous service to our customers. This is important from a customer service standpoint, and fulfils a key government regulation with which the organisation must comply.