Trustpower Safeguards New Zealand’s Power and Telecoms Network

The Customer: Trustpower

Trustpower is a leading New Zealand power, gas, broadband and phone company. With over 230,000 customers and 30 hydro power stations across 19 hydroelectric power schemes, Trustpower is one of the country’s largest electricity generators and retailers.

How Does a Leading Multi-Utility Company Improve and Modernize Their Security Posture?

Energy generators and retailers in New Zealand and across the globe are under pressure to increase the reliability and resiliency of their systems. The same goes for broadband and telecommunications companies. Trustpower is all of these things and more and its cybersecurity requirements reflect this.

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Put simply, a cyber incident could severely impact the company's security posture and resilience. And the impact goes well beyond Trustpower to include its intricate supply chain, a common vulnerability for large organizations.

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Trustpower had already invested heavily in its security systems, with considerable focus on areas such as prevention and firewalls. But this traditional approach to cybersecurity offered little-to-no visibility into what was really happening in the network.

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As Trustpower continued to grow, digitize and add more to its operational environment, this lack of visibility became an even greater issue. Trustpower decided to take a new approach to cut through the noise.

Deep Asset Discovery and Operational Visibility with Nozomi Networks

In a competitive bidding process, Nozomi Networks proved its worth by demonstrating its Guardian R50 solution in a lab environment. There, it was able to capture live traffic and show instant insight and improvement. No other provider operating in New Zealand could match Nozomi Networks' deep asset discovery and operational visibility. This led to the rollout of a Proof of Concept (PoC) trial in one of Trustpower’s sites.

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The solution was put through its paces, taking on up to five times its node capacity. Under high volume conditions, it was still able to identify and track what was happening in the company’s operational environments. Trustpower quickly realized that it needed to roll out the solution across all of its sites to gain a full understanding of what was on its networks and how devices were communicating.

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Not only did Guardian automatically create a detailed asset inventory, it identified various vulnerabilities and anomalies across the company’s communications links. Much needed upgrades and patches to Trustpower’s OT were no longer a mystery and Trustpower gained better context and analysis across its operational environment.

Improved Visibility, Contextual Awareness and Third-party Security and Relationships

Guardian has simplified and automated Trustpower’s OT/IoT visibility and cybersecurity. The company now comfortably meets government guidelines on OT and IoT security. It has even improved its third-party relationships by sharpening mutual security practices and breaking down walls that could have left the supply chain vulnerable.

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Trustpower has achieved full visibility and monitoring across their entire ecosystem of sites and business divisions and a deeper understanding of anomalies, vulnerabilities and potential threats. They now receive automatic real-time notification of industrial events of interest, including alerts triggered by custom-designed rules and constraints and traffic analysis for current and future investigations.