KPN protects its business and customers from security breaches with Elastic

The telecommunications sector has been trying to balance growth and innovation with environmental concerns for several years. KPN is one of the leading exponents of this approach. With over 10.5 million mobile and 4.3 million broadband subscribers, it is a leading telecommunications and IT provider in the Netherlands. Its mission, to connect the Netherlands to a sustainable future, is supported by a 100% green electricity policy. Since 2015, the business has been climate-neutral.

The extent of their business means that security is a priority for the business – especially KPN's corporate clients, who must keep up with the fast-changing threat landscape. In this industry, malware and ransomware pose a very serious threat due to the volume of employees and endpoint devices such as laptops, mobile phones, and tablets.

Erno Doorenspleet, CTO Security, KPN, says, "Some of the largest businesses in the Netherlands as well as government, education, and healthcare organizations rely on KPN for the security of their systems. We protect them against various threats, from hackers motivated by financial gain to criminals sponsored by foreign governments."

KPN must also protect its infrastructure and data at all costs. "If we have a data breach it could have an impact on our customers as well damage our reputation," says Doorenspleet.

Alignment with regulation is also a challenge. This includes the European Union's NIS2 Directive, which will enter into force in October 2024 and aims to achieve a high common level of cybersecurity across the region.

KPN's security operations center (SOC) is at the heart of the business's cybersecurity operations. From here, its security specialists secure and monitor the ICT infrastructure of the business and its customers 24/7. This includes security monitoring, protection against DDoS attacks, and compliance monitoring. "It means our customers can focus on their business safely in the knowledge that we are protecting their applications and systems," says Doorenspleet.

Elastic plays a central role in this environment, thanks to its comprehensive security and observability coverage alongside support from the team itself. Doorenspleet highlighted the role of the Elastic team when he was researching the marketplace for a cybersecurity solution. "With Elastic, it is more like entering into a business partnership than buying a piece of software. Instead of a sales pitch, they listened to our situation and invited us to try out the technology firsthand. It gave us enormous confidence when making our decision."

This collaborative approach is also helping KPN to build security services for the future. This includes protecting businesses that run their ICT infrastructure in distributed, multi-cloud environments. "Our role is to help our customers grow their business, including when they migrate to the cloud. With Elastic Security we can continue to help them, on-premise, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments."

For KPN, ease of use is also important. "When you look at the number of people in our security team as well as our customers, you need technology that is simple to learn and transparent for everyone." KPN finds great value in the ease of use, especially when paired with Elastic's speed and flexibility. "Some of the old-school solutions are very limiting in the way that you can look at data. Elastic is powerful and flexible, so we get faster, better quality results." This flexibility is especially important when aligning KPN and its clients with industry regulation. Doorenspleet says, "By improving their security posture, Elastic enables organizations to manage cybersecurity risks as well as report incidents and other activities in a way that proves compliance with regulations, including the EU's NIS2 directive."

KPN is using Elastic to measure customer sentiment across social media, online reviews, and market trends. By identifying positive, neutral, and negative content, the business can make clear-headed decisions about which services to promote, which to maintain, and which to improve. "With so many customers and relationships, there is a huge amount of data to gather and analyze. Elastic makes this process scalable while providing us with actionable insights for the business," says Doorenspleet.

KPN has some 2,000 developers who use data gathered and analyzed by Elastic to streamline the software lifecycle. "With log analysis and error detection in Elastic, our engineers can identify issues as part of the development process and ensure the quality of applications when they go to production," says Doorenspleet.

He also has full confidence in Elastic when it comes to the role of artificial intelligence in current and future Elastic releases. "Both KPN and Elastic understand that AI represents an enormous opportunity, but that this must not compromise our approach to issues like AI bias, privacy, and the environment. Elastic shares these values, which is critical for our ongoing collaboration."

• Read more about how Elastic supports the telco industry
• Learn how T-Mobile boosts broadband customer satisfaction with Elastic
• Download the 2023 Elastic Global Threat Report to better understand how to prevent cybersecurity threats