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Aston Martin swaps out legacy antivirus for AI-driven service
Luxury car manufacturer says the advent of artificial intelligence-powered services will revolutionise its security posture
Luxury auto-maker Aston Martin Lagonda has ejected its legacy antivirus cyber security service in favour of a new SentinelOne endpoint protection platform leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), as it looks to secure its manufacturing, headquarters, supply chain and field offices against a rapidly evolving threat landscape.
With more than 100 years of British automotive heritage under its bonnet, Aston Martin – which came together with the Lagonda marque in 1947 – said it felt traditional antivirus solutions were no longer fit for purpose when it came to protecting against malware and ransomware attacks, and that its old setup was taking too much time from too many people to manage, as well as slowing down the end-user compute experience.
Like many automotive specialists, Aston Martin Lagonda runs a highly complex IT landscape that includes workloads running on Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as in the cloud, alongside high-spec computer-aided design and engineering (CAD, CAE) and design production workstations. The firm needed something that would work across all these environments and have robust application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate across its tech stack.
“We couldn’t have any solution that was going to get in the way of our users, particularly our engineers and designers,” said Steve O'Connor, IT director at Aston Martin Lagonda.
“We wanted a platform that was simple to use and almost invisible to the users, but would give us complete confidence and security. Most of all, we wanted something future-proof as Aston Martin Lagonda continues constantly innovating.”
SentinelOne’s Singularity platform emerged as a clearly differentiated service during a multi-supplier proof of concept, said O’Connor. Described by its creators as a “product-first” approach, and powered by AI and machine learning elements, it both prevents attacks and autonomously reverses any threats detected, freeing up security staff. Aston Martin Lagonda added the firm’s Vigilance managed detection and response service to take advantage of an always-on security operations centre (SOC) service.
“We were impressed by how quickly SentinelOne had come to lead the enterprise security market with capabilities we didn’t see from any other vendor,” said O’Connor. “We saw unrivalled protection and very low numbers of false positives, all while receiving positive responses from users across all operating systems.
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“Almost immediately during the proof of concept, SentinelOne emerged as the solution for us. The roll-out was even easier than we expected, despite our complex landscape. Watching the SentinelOne platform tackle threats head-on – which our existing legacy antivirus missed – was a great moment for the team.”
SentinelOne chief operating officer Nicholas Warner said: “To be entrusted with securing Aston Martin Lagonda’s workforce, platforms and systems is an honour.
“We are confident SentinelOne’s patented approach not only delivers unrivalled levels of protection and visibility, but also lives true to the experience we provide to more than 4,000 leading enterprises worldwide. With SentinelOne behind the wheel, Aston Martin Lagonda takes its cyber defences to new levels while saving time and operational costs in running a global cyber security operation.”
