Securing a Global Mining Corporation's Firewall Infrastructure

1,000+ employees worldwide Canada (Global Operations) Ongoing managed services engagement

A publicly traded multinational mining company with operations across North America and Europe was drowning in unmanaged firewall policies. BALANCED+ centralized, rationalized, and took over ongoing management.

The client is a publicly traded multinational mining corporation with operations spanning North America and Europe, listed on both the TSX and NYSE. With over 1,000 employees worldwide, the company operates more than a dozen sites, each hosting separate internet and OT firewalls across a hybrid infrastructure that includes public cloud data centers and on-premises operational technology environments.

At this scale, cybersecurity is not just an IT concern, it’s an operational and regulatory imperative. The complexity of managing a globally distributed security infrastructure demanded a level of specialization and dedicated attention that exceeded what the internal IT team could sustain.

The corporation’s IT department was responsible for managing dozens of firewalls and hundreds of associated policies distributed across global sites, without a centralized management system or sufficient in-house expertise to handle the volume. The result was a fragmented security posture riddled with duplicated efforts, conflicting rule sets, and policy gaps that left the organization exposed.

With OT environments, cloud infrastructure, and corporate networks all requiring independent oversight, the lack of standardization wasn’t just inefficient, it was a material security risk for a publicly accountable company operating in a critical industry.

Dozens of firewalls and hundreds of policies across global sites with no centralized management system.
Internal IT team lacked the specialized expertise required to manage firewall complexity at this scale.
Conflicting and redundant firewall rules created inconsistent security postures across sites.
Siloed department management led to duplicated effort and ungoverned policy changes.
No formal process for evaluating or tracking firewall change requests against security best practices.

BALANCED+ began with a comprehensive security policy review and gap analysis, auditing existing firewall rules for compliance, identifying redundancies and conflicts, and establishing a clear picture of the company’s overall security posture before making any changes. This foundation allowed the team to build a rationalization and standardization plan grounded in facts, not assumptions.

Following the initial assessment, BALANCED+ deployed a centralized firewall management platform, consolidated and cleaned up the existing policy landscape, and transitioned the client onto a fully managed services model with structured governance, including monthly review meetings, change request evaluation, and ongoing roadmap planning.

Security Audit & Gap Analysis

Reviewed all existing firewall rules and policies across every site, assessing compliance with internal policy and identifying gaps, conflicts, and redundancies in the current security posture.

Policy Rationalization & Standardization

Eliminated duplicate and conflicting rule sets, standardized policies across global and local firewalls, and established a clean, documented baseline configuration aligned to industry best practices.

Centralized Management Deployment

Deployed a centralized firewall management platform to unify visibility and control across all sites, eliminating siloed management and creating a single point of entry for configuration and policy changes.

Managed Services Onboarding

Transitioned the client to BALANCED+'s managed services team for ongoing firewall management, including change request ticketing, best-practice evaluation, and global policy monitoring.

Governance & Roadmap Reviews

Established monthly meetings to review security policies, assess upcoming infrastructure changes, evaluate change requests, and maintain a forward-looking security roadmap.

With BALANCED+ managing their global firewall infrastructure, the corporation moved from a fragmented, reactive security posture to a centrally governed, proactive one. Firewall policies across all sites are now consolidated, standardized, and continuously monitored, eliminating the redundancy and exposure that had accumulated over years of siloed management.

The internal IT team was freed from the operational burden of day-to-day firewall management, allowing them to focus on strategic priorities while BALANCED+ maintained the security baseline and handled all change requests against documented best practices.

Managing our global firewall and its policies had become unmanageable. We were aware of the inefficiencies and conflicting policies that left us exposed. We needed to act quickly.

Executive Manager, Global Mining Corporation