Customer Story
International Pharmaceutical Firm Relies on the AI-Powered CrowdStrike Falcon Cybersecurity Platform
The medac group is a global pharmaceutical company headquartered in Germany. It provides high-quality pharmaceuticals to patients in over 91 countries worldwide. With more than 2,000 employees, medac continuously works on enhancing approved medications and developing innovative therapy options across four key areas: rheumatology, urology, hematology, and oncology.
As a medical and pharmaceutical company, medac must adhere to stringent global regulations and compliance standards while maintaining the highest security standards — including in the realm of cybersecurity. That's why medac relies on the AI-native CrowdStrike Falcon® cybersecurity platform for comprehensive endpoint and identity protection, using CrowdStrike Falcon® Insight EDR, CrowdStrike Falcon® Identity Protection, CrowdStrike Falcon® Exposure Management, and CrowdStrike Falcon® LogScale™.
As a medical and pharmaceutical company, medac must adhere to stringent global regulations and compliance standards while maintaining the highest security standards — including in the realm of cybersecurity. That's why medac relies on the AI-native CrowdStrike Falcon® cybersecurity platform for comprehensive endpoint and identity protection, using CrowdStrike Falcon® Insight EDR, CrowdStrike Falcon® Identity Protection, CrowdStrike Falcon® Exposure Management, and CrowdStrike Falcon® LogScale™.
AI-Powered Security Platform Combats Modern Threats
To stay ahead of adversaries, Alexander Grimm, Head of IT Security and Cloud at medac, sought a next-generation security solution that would provide maximum visibility across the company’s entire IT infrastructure and be flexible enough to adapt to the challenges of the modern threat landscape.
“The threat landscape is constantly evolving, and attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated,” explains Grimm. “As an IT security team, we must rely on innovative security solutions more than ever to ensure maximum protection and effectively combat modern cyber threats.”
During the evaluation process, medac was particularly impressed by CrowdStrike’s unified platform architecture, which features one lightweight agent and one console to deliver a wide range of protections. This both provides the internal IT security team with centralized oversight and enables them to analyze and eliminate legacy security issues across its application and system landscape.
“The threat landscape is constantly evolving, and attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated,” explains Grimm. “As an IT security team, we must rely on innovative security solutions more than ever to ensure maximum protection and effectively combat modern cyber threats.”
During the evaluation process, medac was particularly impressed by CrowdStrike’s unified platform architecture, which features one lightweight agent and one console to deliver a wide range of protections. This both provides the internal IT security team with centralized oversight and enables them to analyze and eliminate legacy security issues across its application and system landscape.
Ready to Handle Zero-Day Vulnerabilities
The final decision to switch to CrowdStrike was accelerated by the discovery of the global Log4j vulnerability in December 2021.
“At that time, swift action was required,” says Grimm. “Based on our prior internal analysis and experience, there was only one solution capable of quickly and easily providing the visibility and transparency we needed.”
The Falcon platform was the top choice, as it met all the required criteria and was able to mitigate the Log4j vulnerability immediately without disrupting ongoing production operations. The rollout was seamless and efficient, thanks to its intelligent lightweight agent.
“At that time, swift action was required,” says Grimm. “Based on our prior internal analysis and experience, there was only one solution capable of quickly and easily providing the visibility and transparency we needed.”
The Falcon platform was the top choice, as it met all the required criteria and was able to mitigate the Log4j vulnerability immediately without disrupting ongoing production operations. The rollout was seamless and efficient, thanks to its intelligent lightweight agent.
Seamless Falcon Platform Deployment
The rollout to 3,000 endpoints was quick and smooth, demonstrating the ease of deployment and immediate effectiveness of CrowdStrike’s solutions.
“We were particularly impressed by the speed of deployment, which we completed within just three days thanks to the platform’s cloud-based architecture and lightweight agent — ensuring we were fully protected right before Christmas,” adds Grimm.
With Falcon Insight for endpoint detection and response (EDR), medac first established comprehensive visibility across its entire IT infrastructure. Today, the company leverages additional Falcon platform modules for broad protection against modern threats.
“We were particularly impressed by the speed of deployment, which we completed within just three days thanks to the platform’s cloud-based architecture and lightweight agent — ensuring we were fully protected right before Christmas,” adds Grimm.
With Falcon Insight for endpoint detection and response (EDR), medac first established comprehensive visibility across its entire IT infrastructure. Today, the company leverages additional Falcon platform modules for broad protection against modern threats.
CrowdStrike Protection Spans Full IT Environment
As part of its cybersecurity strategy, medac prioritized identity security. “More and more attackers attempt to infiltrate companies through identity-based attacks,” says Grimm. “Greater visibility is key to uncovering hidden, identity-based threats. By using CrowdStrike EDR and identity protection on the same platform and sensor, we save valuable time while simultaneously closing security gaps. Additionally, CrowdStrike has given us instant insight into our identities and user behaviors, enabling us to detect at-risk user accounts, administrator accounts, and compromised passwords.”
Ensuring robust security for mobile devices was also a critical objective for medac. CrowdStrike Falcon® for Mobile leverages CrowdStrike’s proven EDR technology for enterprise devices, delivering unprecedented visibility into malicious, unauthorized, or accidental access to sensitive company data by automatically detecting a wide range of adversary tactics and techniques on iOS and Android devices.
“With Falcon for Mobile, we can now consolidate all activities and alerts across devices into a single console, providing a clear view of the entire event chain,” says Grimm.
By expanding the Falcon platform with Falcon Exposure Management, medac’s security team can now fully manage its vulnerability lifecycle. “We’re pleased that, with CrowdStrike’s AI-native platform, we can now conduct targeted vulnerability management. The enhanced visibility, combined with exposure management, enables us to proactively address security issues. While vulnerability management doesn’t replace penetration testing, it significantly helps us manage internal and external exposed assets,” says Grimm.
Given medac’s extensive portfolio of products and services that generate log data, the company also sought a new solution to improve log management.
“We needed a solution that would allow us to collect, retrieve, and analyze log files. Our key requirement was a simple and flexible implementation that our entire IT team could access to extract log data and present it in customized dashboards,” explained Grimm. “Falcon LogScale convinced us right away and has been instrumental in troubleshooting. Now, we can efficiently search unstructured event logs, compare the number of events, and analyze data — all within the Falcon console. Personally, I find it to be an elegant and highly promising solution.”
Ensuring robust security for mobile devices was also a critical objective for medac. CrowdStrike Falcon® for Mobile leverages CrowdStrike’s proven EDR technology for enterprise devices, delivering unprecedented visibility into malicious, unauthorized, or accidental access to sensitive company data by automatically detecting a wide range of adversary tactics and techniques on iOS and Android devices.
“With Falcon for Mobile, we can now consolidate all activities and alerts across devices into a single console, providing a clear view of the entire event chain,” says Grimm.
By expanding the Falcon platform with Falcon Exposure Management, medac’s security team can now fully manage its vulnerability lifecycle. “We’re pleased that, with CrowdStrike’s AI-native platform, we can now conduct targeted vulnerability management. The enhanced visibility, combined with exposure management, enables us to proactively address security issues. While vulnerability management doesn’t replace penetration testing, it significantly helps us manage internal and external exposed assets,” says Grimm.
Given medac’s extensive portfolio of products and services that generate log data, the company also sought a new solution to improve log management.
“We needed a solution that would allow us to collect, retrieve, and analyze log files. Our key requirement was a simple and flexible implementation that our entire IT team could access to extract log data and present it in customized dashboards,” explained Grimm. “Falcon LogScale convinced us right away and has been instrumental in troubleshooting. Now, we can efficiently search unstructured event logs, compare the number of events, and analyze data — all within the Falcon console. Personally, I find it to be an elegant and highly promising solution.”
Platform Consolidation Maximizes Resources
By implementing the Falcon platform, medac has gained complete visibility over all endpoints and identities, enabling the immediate detection and mitigation of suspicious activity.
“By consolidating our critical security solutions onto the Falcon platform, we’ve significantly reduced the time and effort required for our security operations. This allows us to focus our efforts on the most pressing and visible security threats, addressing them efficiently,” emphasizes Grimm.
Transitioning to CrowdStrike also eliminated blindspots, as the single-agent solution revealed previously hidden areas. Consequently, the number of identified and remediated vulnerabilities increased substantially, reducing the company’s overall attack surface.
A company’s IT environment is always evolving, requiring continuous adjustments and improvements — including security platform integration and architecture refinements.
“By consolidating our critical security solutions onto the Falcon platform, we’ve significantly reduced the time and effort required for our security operations. This allows us to focus our efforts on the most pressing and visible security threats, addressing them efficiently,” emphasizes Grimm.
Transitioning to CrowdStrike also eliminated blindspots, as the single-agent solution revealed previously hidden areas. Consequently, the number of identified and remediated vulnerabilities increased substantially, reducing the company’s overall attack surface.
A company’s IT environment is always evolving, requiring continuous adjustments and improvements — including security platform integration and architecture refinements.
