How Wiz reduced critical risks in the cloud at BMW by 95 percent 

BMW, global leader in electric mobility and connected cars, has undergone a fundamental strengthening of its cloud security with security company Wiz.

Thanks to Wiz got BMW full visibility into thousands of workloads within days and reduced the number of critical security issues by 95 percent in the cloud, while doubling the number of workloads over the same period. In addition to the security improvements, this also led to a significant increase in operational efficiency, allowing BMW to focus more on innovation and continued growth. 

Digital acceleration requires scalable security 

BMW identified the cloud's potential for increased innovation and speed early on. When electric vehicle and connected cars accelerated the pace of the automotive market, the cloud became a crucial factor in meeting the growing need in IT. 

However, the rapid adoption of cloud in a complex and global multicloud environment also brought risks. BMW is an organization with high quality and security requirements and understood the need for transparency in its cloud environment to be able to identify security risks and vulnerabilities in time. 

The cloud-based security tools BMW previously used operated with separate controls and regulations, which did not provide the standardization and central overview the company needed. At the same time, BMW wanted to give its internal teams maximum freedom to drive innovation without the added friction or costs that burdensome security controls can bring. 

Log4j became a catalyst for implementing complete visibility into the cloud

BMW evaluated several different solutions, where Wiz ambitious product portfolio stood out. During the evaluation phase with Wiz, the global Log4j vulnerability occurred, which required quick action and turned out to be a decisive factor in Wiz's favor. 

Within days, all cloud resources were connected to Wiz, giving teams immediate visibility into where vulnerable Log4j instances were running, allowing them to quickly assess risks and prioritize actions. 

This experience changed internal priorities: automated action management remained important, but complete visibility into the cloud environment proved crucial. While on-premises tools relied on manual inventories and separate overviews, Wiz immediately provided a centralized and unified view of everything running in the cloud.

Security as an accelerator 

The implementation of Wiz significantly improved BMW's safety level, while Wiz also turned out to have a broader impact than expected: BMW discovered more workloads that it was not aware of. The implementation also meant that the collaboration between security and DevOps teams was strengthened, a change that transformed BMW's safety culture and democratized safety work between different teams. 

Today there is 95 percent of Wiz users are outside the security team, primarily within DevOps teams. By making security information, including concrete action plans, readily available to developers, security became a natural part of the development process instead of something that was handled after the fact. Security teams also use the platform to share insights with management, which speeds up decision-making and reduces the need for manual reporting. 

The next step towards continuous security 

BMW wanted to prevent its security efforts from evolving into a fragmented landscape of disparate tools. By choosing a single, agnostic platform for the cloud, the company not only reduced risk but also improved operational efficiency. 

In the short term, BMW plans to expand the use of Wiz to more parts of its cloud security program, including the use of Wiz Code, which is the part that focuses on securing application code during the development process, a rollout of Kubernetes functionality, and further development of Cloud Detection and Response (CDR).

”For organizations operating globally in complex multi-cloud environments, modern cloud security is about complete visibility and collaboration between teams,”, says Bart van de Burgt, Head of EMEA Central and North at Wiz. ”BMW shows that it is possible to accelerate innovation while strengthening safety when development teams gain immediate insight into risks and what actions are needed.” 

More information about the collaboration between Wiz and BMW and other customer examples can be found on the Wiz website. here.