Complex, siloed security hampers real estate business growth
Sherry FitzGerald’s estate agents are continuously on call: valuing residential and commercial properties, negotiating sales between buyers and sellers, and advising people on mortgages. The work is hectic and fast-paced, and it relies on secure connectivity across the 100-strong Irish and Northern Irish branch network. Any data outage could jeopardise a sale agreement, damage the organisation’s reputation, or curb growth. The challenges included:
- Staying ahead of threats: Sherry FitzGerald processes large financial transactions, sensitive personal data, and communications between buyers, sellers, lenders, and lawyers – making it an attractive target for cybercriminals.
- Adapting to the modern way of work: The traditional perimeter security model could not handle the combined load of a hybrid workforce, cloud applications, and data sprawl.
- Overcoming complexity: Its existing point products created security gaps and friction, and degraded the user experience. It also delayed the integration of new estate agency branches.
- Reducing costs: The MPLS network was expensive to deploy and manage.
“We’re increasingly reliant on online property platforms, digital documentation, cloud, and electronic communication to manage sales negotiations,” says Chris Cooke, Divisional Director Cloud Systems & Cyber Security at Sherry FitzGerald. “We needed a simple, cloud-delivered security platform to protect our users and their devices – whether they’re in the office or on-site visiting a property.”
“Palo Alto Networks gives the business peace of mind – it’s like a nice comfort blanket securing users and stabilising the revenue stream. It makes my day-to-day life so much easier, especially during this acquisition period that we’re in.”
— Chris Cooke
Divisional Director Cloud Systems & Cyber Security, Sherry FitzGerald
Consolidated security drives competitive advantage
Sherry FitzGerald was already using Cortex XDR to shield its endpoints from threats. It was this success that led the company to deploy Strata Cloud Manager and Prisma Access when its existing MPLS contract was up for renewal. With these tools, the organisation can now manage its security posture in real-time using the Zero Trust Posture Center and automate complex mandates via the Compliance Center. With the Quantum Readiness Dashboard, the security team can also future-proof its encryption strategy.
“By consolidating security around industry-leading technologies, we are taking complexity out of the business, making it easier to eliminate threats,” comments Chris.
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Supports property business growth
Simple, consistent security helps Sherry FitzGerald grow its business by building trust, protecting revenue, and ensuring resilient operations.
For example, GlobalProtect creates an encrypted tunnel from the endpoints to the Prisma Access cloud, which in turn secures traffic before allowing access to apps or the internet. “We can now keep all our data secure and we’re as close to zero trust as we can be. We’re also much more agile - we deployed Prisma Access very quickly. This has all been huge for us,” explains Chris.
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Accelerates acquisition onboarding from ‘months to days’
The scalable, adaptive platform approach allows Sherry FitzGerald to pivot immediately to new business opportunities. “Before we moved to the one platform we had a very convoluted, primitive way of onboarding new branches. With Palo Alto Networks it is all very seamless out of the box,” comments Chris.
Two years ago, for instance, Sherry FitzGerald acquired Simon Brien Residential, one of Northern Ireland’s leading estate agents. “Previously, onboarding into our environment had taken weeks or months. Now with Palo Alto Networks this is down to sometimes just hours.” says Chris.
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Reduces MTTD and MTTR by 80%
Platformization eliminates the trade-off between security, performance, and operational simplicity. Sherry FitzGerald’s commitment to platformization began with the successful deployment of Cortex XDR to shield endpoints from threats. AI-powered defence, complete security visibility, and automation have all helped to reduce mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR) by 80%.
“Cortex XDR’s causality chain is really powerful for chasing down incidents and security alerts. We can see exactly what’s executed, quickly make a decision on whether it’s benign or malicious, and immediately isolate the endpoints as required,” explains Chris.
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Increases security productivity by 40%
With Cortex XDR, Sherry FitzGerald can see everything that is executed and isolate endpoints in just seconds. The platform is quick and easy to manage, and has increased productivity by up to 40%. Chris estimates that, without Cortex XDR, three full-time equivalent (FTE) people would be needed to manage security.
The organisation is using Strata Cloud Manager to reduce complexity and risk through a single interface across both the Cortex XDR and Prisma Access deployments. This has dramatically simplified operations, enhanced security policy management, and boosted overall visibility. “We lacked visibility with our previous suppliers. Now we have a single pane of glass to manage our security with Strata Cloud Manager,” says Chris.
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Reduces cost of security by 40%
AI-powered automation and simplicity deliver breakthrough cost savings. Prisma Access reduces Sherry FitzGerald’s security costs by moving security infrastructure to the cloud and consolidating multiple tools into one platform. This results in fewer vendor licenses and lower management overhead, while eliminating the security gaps typically created by fragmented, unintegrated legacy systems.
“Previously we had a horrendous management overhead with the MPLS network. Reducing this overhead was one of the key business cases for moving to Prisma Access and GlobalProtect – alongside its many security benefits. We are now saving 40% in costs,” adds Chris.
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Delivers intuitive, transparent user experience
The estate agents can focus on property management, not security administration. Users are not even aware of Prisma Access, they simply benefit from easy, uninterrupted business connectivity. This manifests itself in a 70% reduction in helpdesk calls.
“The VPN we were using previously was a lot more clunky to manage and less secure. With Prisma Access, we don’t get complaints from end users. There’s comfort from knowing we always have a level of protection and we don’t need to live in it 24/7,” says Chris.
Next up, Sherry FitzGerald plans to deploy Prisma Browser™ to extend SASE protection to every device. This will safely enable ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) policies, support and secure the use of GenAI, and improve onboarding of acquisitions.
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