The presence of poorly maintained websites increases security risks

Nikon, Japan's leading optical equipment manufacturer, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2017. The company's main products are digital cameras, FPD exposure equipment and semiconductor exposure equipment that support the electronic society, microscopes and retinal imaging diagnostic equipment that contribute to the bioscience and medical fields, measuring instruments that are essential for advanced manufacturing, and non-destructive non-contact equipment. We are developing a wide range of businesses such as inspection systems for In addition, it is a global company with more than 90 group companies around the world, and more than 80% of sales are made outside of Japan.

In the company, apart from the corporate site managed by the public relations department, each business department creates its own product site and campaign site. Regarding this point, Mr. Kiyofumi Takahashi, Manager of the First Technology Section of the Information Security Promotion Headquarters, said, "In today's business, a sense of speed is required for everything, and marketing is inevitably led by the frontline. Due to the fact that most of the Company sales are overseas, not only our group companies in each country but also our sales agents are conducting marketing activities tailored to local conditions, and we create various websites as necessary. While this has enabled speedy business development around the world, we could not deny the existence of websites that the head office could not grasp."

If a website is poorly managed, it may be exploited for cyberattacks. If a company's official website becomes a platform for attacks, even the Nikon brand could be damaged. Therefore, the company conducted a survey of the websites owned by group companies around the world and started managing them.
“This work was mainly handled by two people, but it was inefficient and took a lot of time because it relied on manual labor. I communicated with them, but they didn't know everything.In addition, the collected information was managed in Excel, and there was also the problem of how to keep it up-to-date. There was.” (Mr. Takahashi)

Understanding and managing all of your company's websites can be a daunting task for companies that do business globally. In addition, since there was no confirmation that all websites were understood, he said that he felt uneasy about whether he was able to respond to all websites every time a vulnerability appeared.

Product demo reveals surprising facts Websites exist that exceed expectations

The impetus for Nikon to seriously consider introducing a tool for website management was a product demonstration that Macnica conducted at the company in January 2016. “Macnica regularly introduces new products, and at this time they showed us a demo of RiskIQ Digital Footprint. We realized that there were many more company websites than we expected, and the sense of crisis within the company suddenly increased.'' (Mr. Takahashi)

Digital Footprint uses a unique technology (virtual user technology) to discover and monitor all corporate websites on the Internet. Reveal unknown IT assets, visualize them on a dashboard, and realize appropriate management and inventory.
“Digital Footprint is the only product that automatically collects information about your website without human intervention. Its collection logic is excellent, and it even finds websites with domains that don’t have Nikon’s name on them. I will give it to you.” (Mr. Takahashi)

Having witnessed the power of Digital Footprint, the company considered whether to introduce the product or continue manual monitoring. In the end, we decided to adopt it, prioritizing work efficiency and accuracy.

Enables reliable identification and monitoring of websites Contributes to enhanced security

Nikon introduced Digital Footprint in November 2016. At the time of the interview (February 2018), they had been using it for more than a year, and the biggest effect was that they were able to reliably identify and monitor websites. "By automating the work that was previously done manually, the operational load has been greatly reduced, and the accuracy of management has improved. Currently, we are proceeding with website inventory based on the visualized information. We have narrowed down the number considerably by closing unnecessary ones.” (Mr. Takahashi)

Digital Footprint also helps improve the security of websites. For example, when a vulnerability was discovered in a certain piece of software, we were able to quickly identify all the websites that were using it, contact the person in charge, and take immediate action such as an update. It says.
“If this had been done manually, it would have required an enormous amount of time and effort. With such a rapid response, there is also the risk of attackers exploiting vulnerabilities. I think it is decreasing.” (Mr. Takahashi)

Considering utilization in other departments to strengthen the website management and operation system

Nikon plans to strengthen its website management and operation system in the future, and is considering deploying Digital Footprint to other departments such as the marketing department as the axis. We are also looking forward to the newly implemented GDPR countermeasure function.

Finally, Takahashi gave high praise for Macnica 's response, saying, "With this implementation, the challenge was how to adapt the cloud service, Digital Footprint, to the Company 's environment, but Macnica answered our questions quickly and courteously. We also made very detailed requests regarding the interface, and they were clearly communicated to the vendor, which made it very easy to use and we're very satisfied. We hope to continue to work with them in the future."

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