Grupo Bimbo protects its global connected supply chain with
Palo Alto Networks

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RESULTS

2X

Company’s insurance coverage doubled without insurers raising the premium

1 Hour

Median time to resolution reduced from days to one hour

$100,000

in monthly connectivity cost savings in one country alone

Introduction

Grupo Bimbo, the world’s largest baker, boasts an impressive portfolio of brands consumed by billions of people each day. Brands including Grupo Bimbo, Sara Lee, Sun-Maid, and Oroweat, which generate $20 billion in revenue. Simple, connected Palo Alto Networks platforms safeguard food production worldwide, ensuring the uninterrupted supply of baked products to millions of consumers every day.

Grupo Bimbo chose to consolidate its security footprint with a suite of Palo Alto Networks platforms. As a result, they are driving down risk, reducing complexity, and automating multiple security processes.

An innovative Zero Trust security strategy for OT devices is being rolled out to support uninterrupted baking in more than 200 bakery plants worldwide. Direct-to-app connectivity is saving $100,000 in monthly savings in Grupo Bimbo’s Colombian operation, and the mean time to detect and respond has been reduced from weeks to minutes. This forward-thinking cyber strategy is so resilient that Grupo Bimbo’s insurers have doubled the company’s insurance coverage without increasing the premium.

CHALLENGE

Nourishing the world with bread, buns, and bagels

At first sight, Grupo Bimbo's cybersecurity goals appear almost impossible: protecting sites and people in 35 countries, rapidly securing newly acquired businesses, supporting a hybrid working model, safeguarding thousands of internet of things (IoT) devices, and providing operational technology (OT) security for multiple environments—including OT that monitors food production equipment. Complexity and change have been major barriers.

Disconnected, siloed platforms Increased risk, reduced productivity, and led to rising operational costs.
Reduce attack surface without negatively impacting performance or hybrid-user experience.
Prevent production downtime by preventing cyberthreats from impacting IoT networks.

"We supply the world. Many global fast-food restaurant and supermarket brands, for example, partner with Grupo Bimbo for their food products. Any outage – however brief – could put this supply chain at risk.”

- Erwin Campos

Chief Information Security Officer,
Grupo Bimbo

SOLUTION

Simple, connected platforms

Grupo Bimbo standardized on simple, comprehensive, scalable Palo Alto Networks platforms to unite its cloud-centric future. This integrated platform approach seizes breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, analytics, automation, and orchestration to protect the organization worldwide across clouds, networks, and mobile devices.

Full visibility
Protection and analytics across 40,000 endpoints.
IoT/OT Security
To provide continuous analysis of OT network behavior.
Threat assessments
To ensure continuous protection.
Connectivity
Direct-to-app connectivity for thousands of people.

“We recently renewed our cybersecurity insurance, and the insurers were so impressed, they doubled our insurance coverage with no additional premium. One insurer commented that our cyber strategy outshone that of many financial services companies.”

Erwin Campos

Chief Information Security Officer, Grupo Bimbo

“Our focus is on bread, not security. Palo Alto Networks helps preserve Grupo Bimbo’s financial advantage by making the business more agile, flexible, and reliable. Protecting the global infrastructure with one common, simple platform means we can focus more resources on our sales, customers, and growth.”

Erwin Campos

Chief Information Security Officer, Grupo Bimbo

“We recently had an incident involving BlackCat. The Cortex XDR Forensics module gave us instant access to threat intelligence and all the forensic artifacts and events. We stopped the incident within a couple of hours. Now, every one of our operations is eager to get their hands on Cortex.”

Erwin Campos

Chief Information Security Officer, Grupo Bimbo

Powers cyber transformation
The connected network and endpoint security platforms enable secure digital transformation—even as Grupo Bimbo’s pace of change accelerates. Erwin explains: “First, Palo Alto Networks has the flexibility to support any legacy environment—and the most modern cloud ones. Second, while many cyber solutions only monitor environments, Palo Alto Networks fights back with unbeatable protection. Third, the platforms are continually innovating, most recently, for example, with the rugged firewalls in the OT environment.”
Ensures uninterrupted baking
With Palo Alto Networks, Grupo Bimbo can safely capitalize on the benefits of Industry 4.0 (for example, using the firewalls for OT monitoring), protect the integrated supply chain, maintain business continuity, and achieve disaster recovery.
Drives people productivity
Grupo Bimbo’s people can now concentrate more on baking and the strategy behind it, and less on security configurations and poor connectivity performance. They also have the flexibility to work anytime, anywhere with high-performance, best-in-class security and direct-to-app connectivity.
Reduces risk
Erwin’s insurers in London recently evaluated Grupo Bimbo’s modern cyber strategy. They were so impressed that they doubled Grupo Bimbo’s insurance coverage with no additional premium.
Increases security agility
Grupo Bimbo can react faster to threats using the streamlined platform approach. “Our MTTR and MTTD have been reduced from days to one hour, and we have successfully stopped three critical incidents. That can be the difference between keeping and losing a business,” says Erwin.
Underpins M&A strategy
As Grupo Bimbo grows through acquisition, the Palo Alto Networks platforms are used to quickly monitor and secure the acquired infrastructure, eliminate threats, and streamline business integration. “We love the flexibility of the cyber architecture. We can replicate it from bakery to bakery quickly and without complexity,” says Erwin.
Simplifies security
The platform approach to security is not only simple, comprehensive, and scalable but also more effective. Automation drives agility, shared intelligence reduces risk, and scalable cyber infrastructure doesn’t require additional resources.
Lowers cost of operation
The connected platforms are less expensive to deploy and maintain than multiple disconnected point cyber solutions. Erwin explains one example: “Prisma Access is live in our Colombian operation and already saving the business approximately $100,000 per month.” In another example, Xpanse has eliminated the cost of redundant hardware and software.