How Boeing Adopts Zero Trust Data-Centric Security with NextLabs

Securing Global Data Access and Accelerating Digital Transformation

Securing data is a significant challenge for organizations, especially when managing a global workforce. For globally operating organizations, while collaboration across business functions and regions significantly enhances innovation and productivity, it also poses challenges related to enterprise data and securing sensitive information.

Organizations often find it challenging to manage dynamic data flows in ERP systems with traditional, static or role-based access controls and manual management processes. This approach often results in heavy customization, excess permission and poor user experience while still overlook protection of critical data. This in combination with a lack of a unified approach to security, further compromises data.

To protect sensitive information, ensure compliance, and facilitate secure collaboration, organizations must switch their focus from a traditional static model to more proactive and dynamic approaches. By utilizing a zero-trust, dynamic data-centric security strategy, enterprises can go beyond perimeter defense and ensure least privilege access to protect critical data and prevent breaches.

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Realtime data-centric protection with NextLabs Zero Trust Data-Centric Security

NextLabs Zero Trust Data-Centric Security combines zero trust principles with data-centric security to create a comprehensive strategy that ensures data protection across all environments. By limiting access to sensitive data through the principle of least privilege and focusing on protecting the data itself, Zero Trust Data-Centric Security enables organizations to enforce need-to-know access, ensure regulatory compliance, and collaborate securely.

NextLabs’ approach centers on a unified policy platform and dynamic authorization policy engine; the platform digitizes business and security needs into centrally managed, attribute-based policies. When a user attempts to access information, the policy engine utilizes Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) policies in real-time to evaluate and authorize access based on various attributes like user, device, resource, and context. This approach simplifies security management, reduces policy complexity, and enhances data protection across diverse systems. It also includes a central activity log for monitoring access, detecting anomalies, analyzing risk, and streamlining compliance reporting.

NextLabs’ Zero Trust Data Security is a comprehensive suite of access enforcement and data protection applications, consisting of:

CloudAz. A unified policy platform with real-time enforcement, CloudAz centralizes administration and employs a zero-trust principle to enforce data-centric security measures and compliance in real-time, by automating least privilege access and securing applications and data. It integrates with existing identity management solutions and provides comprehensive logging, auditing, and reporting capabilities to streamline compliance requirements. CloudAz is a nature and battle-tested policy engine that processes more than 10 billion authorization requests per year.

SkyDRM. An enterprise digital rights management (E-DRM) solution, SkyDRM persistently protects unstructured data at rest and in transit, irrespective of its location. The file type agnostic enforcer secures and monitors business-critical documents across devices, data centers, apps, cloud services, and on-premises. SkyDRM also provides support for federated identity to enable cross-enterprise collaboration.

Application Enforcer. An external authorization management solution, the solution simplifies access management and uses attribute-based access control to enforce the principle of least privilege. This in turn ensures that apps and data are accessible to only authorized entities and provides additional controls for organizations with extensive security and compliance requirements without the need for custom coding.

Data Access Enforcer (DAE). A global data access enforcer, the solution offers dynamic data security and data access governance that operates independently of user interfaces, APIs, services, and applications. It supports any Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) application with a unified set of policies, enabling record-level data segregation, field-level data masking like format-preserving encryption, and real-time granular control over data manipulation actions.

Working together, the four products provide a comprehensive data-centric security and policy enforcement solution to protect structured and unstructured data throughout its entire lifecycle: at rest, in transit, and in use; to ensure end to end secure data pipeline regardless of where data resides – whether it is in application, file, file repository, or database on-premises, or in the cloud. Additionally, NextLabs Zero Trust Data-Centric Security offers an extensive set of out-of-the-box enforcers for SAP and non-SAP enterprise applications including PLM, CRM, ECM, DBMS, CAD, Big Data, and BI.

Experienced in helping more than 200 global 2000 companies and federal agencies in implementing Zero Trust Architecture and Data-Centric Security, NextLabs developed deep industry knowledge and subject matter expertise that has helped organizations  address information risk, regulatory compliance, data governance, access management, and secure collaboration challenges. In the next section is a case study of Boeing’s implementation of NextLabs to secure global data access across multiple platforms.

Boeing’s Zero Trust Implementation

Embracing the digital era, Boeing, leader in aerospace and defense, launched its Digital Transformation program with the objective to modernize IT and harness data analytics and advanced decision-making tools. This would allow the company to enhance product quality and manufacturing efficiency across its global enterprise.

As Boeing expanded beyond its traditional US base, it is seeing a growing demand for agility and solution flexibility. With an increasingly globalized workforce and customer base, Boeing faces heightened risk and compliance demands to safeguard sensitive data and implement need-to-know access across diverse business groups and supply chain partners. Boeing is also required to provide real-time visibility for security and data access activities.

Addressing the need for robust global data protection, Boeing turned to NextLabs’ Zero Trust Data Security to secure data access across its SAP S/4HANA instance and various bedrock applications. NextLabs’ software provides Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC), centralized policy repository, and attribute digitization functionality to safeguard enterprise data against unauthorized access while enabling ‘least privilege’ principle.

In less than 12 months, NextLabs enabled Boeing to consolidate its ERP systems – including ERP, PLM, and BI systems – in a single global instance. NextLabs’ out-of-the-box (OOTB) integration with SAP applications and hundreds of other business applications,  empowered Boeing to improve operational efficiency and productivity, streamline processes, and provide real-time data access for better monitoring.

With NextLabs, Boeing securely managed data across all its US and more than 65 international sites, ensuring compliance with various regulations and simplifying global data access for export control, prevent leakage of trade secret, cybersecurity, and personal information protection. The solution also automates and enables proactive security and compliance measures to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.

To learn more about Boeing’s Digital Transformation Journey, register for Boeing’s webinar on August 22, here.