Founded in Los Angeles, California in 2012, b Spot is a new revolutionary mobile-based game network that allows players to bet and win real cash. All of b Spot’s mobile games are free to play and when you’re ready to place a bet, you tap a “play for money button” to make a cash wager. Results from all well-known wagers, whether it’s the roll of dice or complex algorithms in slot machines, are based on a real event. With b Spot, all payouts are determined by live horse races.
As part of b Spot’s registration process, players are required to provide personal information to enable b Spot to verify their identity. Because b Spot operates in a highly regulated industry, it maintains robust security practices and systems to protect personal information from unauthorized access. For these protection needs, b Spot turns to the AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) platform.
Joe Hasson is the Chief Operating Officer at b Spot and also played an integral part in bringing legal online gaming to the U.S. He said that because of the size of their company, b Spot needed to find a trusted security solution that they could quickly implement and manage with a small team. “Security is extremely important in our industry. One of the things that was factored into our decision in selecting a security solution was the time to get it up and running and the ability to have support that ensured deployment was successful,” said Hasson.
In their competitive analysis of security providers, b Spot included AlienVault among the top contenders. b Spot’s Director of Network Operations, Stefan Schwoegler, said he first heard about AlienVault from a previous colleague of his in the aerospace industry who saw AlienVault as a trusted company in the security space.
“When we began evaluating AlienVault at b Spot two things really stood out to us. One, it’s one of the few solutions that can operate cross platform in the cloud. Two, we’re big proponents of open-source software, which AlienVault is built on. The fact that AlienVault has both open-source products and a commercial offering on top of that was huge for us,” said Schwoegler.
b Spot evaluated AlienVault and within weeks they decided it was the right security solution for their company. “As soon as we turned it on, that was in the cloud and with one remote sensor in LA, we started seeing detections and finding stuff on our network that we weren’t seeing before, so it was an immediate ROI payoff in terms of visibility,” said Schwoegler.
Since deployment, b Spot has also come to find a lot of value in AlienVault Labs. AlienVault Labs is a research team that maps out different types of attacks and then provides threat intelligence updates in the form of correlation directives, IDS signatures, vulnerability audits, asset discovery signatures, IP reputation data, data source plugins, and report templates.
“The Labs team is coming out with some amazing work. Just having their support and knowing that they are focused on identifying threats is a key differentiator for the USM platform,” said Schwoegler.
In fact, b Spot recently used correlation directives from AlienVault Labs to detect and respond to instances vulnerable to POODLE attacks. “When POODLE came out, within 24 hours AlienVault Labs had delivered not only the signatures but also the directives to give me the alerts. We were then instantly ready to start remediating the threat and clean up the hosts,” said Schwoegler.
Threat intelligence sharing is also made available for free to anyone who joins AlienVault’s Open Threat Exchange (OTX). Members have open access to a global community of threat researchers and security professionals who share information about threats to help each other avoid breaches and minimize damage from attacks. “I was recently a beta user for OTX 2.0 and it’s epic. In my opinion it’s exactly what a threat intelligence sharing community should be,” said Schwoegler.
As b Spot continues to grow and their security needs intensify, they are excited to rely on AlienVault USM’s multiple security features to ensure their customer’s data is safely guarded. “AlienVault USM is not a point solution, it’s a unified approach with an open source foundation that doesn’t get watered down by deployment into a public cloud. All of that combines into a nobrainer for us when selecting a security provider,” said Schwoegler.
