How DSM Helped American Apparel Brand Expand into Europe – Case Study

Customer Profile

The customer is top-rated amongst workers in the United States for its premium-durable apparel fashion.  They have thousands of employees and carry a vintage heritage of creating products that withstand tough conditions. 

USE CASE

Transparent Data Encryption

INDUSTRY

Apparel

PRODUCTS

Business Challenge:

Previously operating solely in the United States, the customer faced new regulatory challenges when expanding into the European market. This expansion required them to enhance their data security processes to comply with stricter local regulations. To support their European operations, the customer leveraged cloud solutions, which offered a cost-effective way to scale without significant investment in physical infrastructure.
The customer needed to ensure secure migration from their on-premises environment to a cloud-based platform as part of their move to the cloud. They also faced challenges in maintaining full control over their data in the cloud, as native cloud technologies didn’t guarantee complete control or security.
Additionally, the customer needed a solution that would allow them to securely collect data from various systems like SAP, SQL databases, and Salesforce, ensuring seamless access and use across their operations. Preventing operational slowdowns during this migration was crucial to avoid costly disruptions and compliance risks.

Solutions

The customer chose Fortanix Data Security Manager for its all-in-one solution to encrypt data, manage encryption keys, and tokenize data. This selection allowed the customer to manage their data security needs through a single interface. The project was split into two phases: the first focused on encrypting their on-premises SQL databases, and the second on tokenizing data for secure use in business systems.
In the first phase, the customer used Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) to secure their on-premises SQL databases before migrating them to the cloud. Fortanix’s Key Management System ensured that the encryption keys were stored separately from the data using a Hardware Security Module (HSM). This separation reduced the risk of unauthorized access, as hackers could not decrypt the data even if they gained access to the cloud environment.
In the second phase, which is still ongoing, the customer began tokenizing data to securely use it in business processes. To do this, they first classified their data to determine what needed to be tokenized. Using Format Preserving Encryption (FPE) Tokenization, the customer could securely transfer data during ETL operations, ensuring that the data could be safely moved, stored, and analyzed in the cloud.