Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team has adopted the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, a cloud-native security platform, to safeguard its users, applications and data across its global operations and rally stages worldwide.
Zscaler, a leader in cloud security, has announced that Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team Oy (TGR-WRT) is using the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange cloud native security platform to protect users, applications and data across its global operations and rally stages all over the world.
Based in Jyväskylä, Finland, the high-performance, competition-oriented company constantly evolves technologies beyond world-level rallying for innovations for the automotive industry.
TGR-WRT runs major programmes for the World Rally Championship, Customer Motorsport and Young Driver Development. As the organisation operates in extreme and often remote locations across the globe, enabling secure, high-performance access to the Internet and private applications was a major challenge for the IT team.
TGR-WRT connects to a combined 100 services, encompassing file storage, SaaS applications, private custom applications for their sensitive engineering and testing data. The fast-growing organisation realised that its traditional security infrastructure, consisting of VPNs and firewalls, was neither agile nor secure enough to serve its needs. When TGR-WRT adopted a cloud-first strategy as part of its push for modernisation, the organisation was also looking for more efficient connectivity for its users on the rally stages and in branch offices, with an improved security posture through a Zero Trust approach.
The security team began its Zero Trust journey by collaborating with Mintly, a Finnish technology integrator, who recommended Zscaler to meet TGR-WRT’s unique requirements. After a successful proof of concept, TGR-WRT worked closely with Mintly to deploy the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform on a tight schedule.
The comprehensive cloud-native Zero Trust security platform now enables fast, secure connections between users, branches, applications, and workloads, anywhere and on any device. It acts as a switchboard, connecting users directly to applications and other resources – not to the network – thereby reducing the attack surface and eliminating the risk of lateral movement.
“Zscaler is one of the best decisions we have made,” said Riku Nykänen, Information Security Officer at TGR-WRT. “The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange simplifies our security architecture. It’s at the core of our protection for all network traffic from our on-premises and cloud servers and the laptops and mobile devices that our teams use at rallies, test events, airports and homes around the world. This comprehensive security platform makes our users happy because it is easy to use and gives them seamless, uninterrupted connectivity. It makes a difference in our races where every tenth of a second counts.”
During a rally, it is critical to get data packages as quickly as possible from cars to all relevant persons so it can be analysed for optimising the performance and reliability of the vehicles. With the help of Zscaler, TGR-WRT built an environment where this highly sensitive data can be sent seamlessly and securely across these different locations.
TGR-WRT deployed Zscaler for Users with Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) to grant users Zero Trust access to the Internet and SaaS applications from anywhere and on any device.
ZIA brokers secure connections between users and applications based on identity, context and business policies. With TLS/SSL traffic inspection and AI-powered defences, it protects all users across various stages of the attack chain to prevent compromise, eliminate lateral movement of threats and prevent data loss.
Additionally, TGR-WRT replaced its unreliable VPN with Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) for seamless and secure access to private applications from any device and location. Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) enables the TGR-WRT help-desk team to detect usability issues, pinpoint root causes and act swiftly to remediate problems to ensure a superior user experience.
The organisation also relies on Zscaler Zero Trust SD-WAN’s direct-to-cloud architecture to forward traffic from service parks and headquarters via a branch connector directly to the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform for secure access to applications and the Internet.
This further reduces complexity of the architecture and adds another layer of data protection by eliminating site-to-site VPNs. In the near future, TGR-WRT plans to implement the Zscaler Client Connector app to provide consistent security and faster connectivity for users at rally locations who depend on mobile phones and tablets.
