The banking sector is vital for country’s economic growth. Banks are responsible for managing the country’s finance and keeping the economy stable. In addition, banks also help stabilize the financial system by providing a source of liquidity during times of economic crisis. In times of economic downturn, it is the financial sector that helps keep the country afloat. Without a strong banking sector, a country would quickly crumble.

The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, also known as CBE, is the oldest and largest bank in Ethiopia. With over 1000 branches and 25,000 employees, it is the most important part of Ethiopia’s economy. CBE provides its customers with a wide range of services, including banking services, loans, and investment services. It is a leading provider of banking services in Ethiopia and is committed to helping its customers grow and prosper. We have worked on a number of projects for CBE, and the Qradar project is one of the most recent one. In this article, we will briefly review the CBE Qradar project.

IE Networks started implementing its “Provision of Upgrading IBM Qradar SEIM & Implementing High Availability Service for Main and Secondary DC” project on December 24, 2021, after receiving a bid award for the project on November 26, 2021. Our team of experts was committed to delivering a high-quality, reliable service to the client.

The main goal of this project was to update an existing security information and event management (SIEM) solution and implement it in a highly available manner in production and DR environments. As such, IE Networks procured and provided the necessary equipment and software along with the implementation. According to the contractual agreement, IE Network successfully delivered the following project scope to CBE’s complete satisfaction to solve the problem.

• Installing and configuring the new Qradar appliances.
• Upgrading the current deployment to match the new Qradar appliances version.
• Downgrading the new appliances, if needed to match the version in the existing Qradar version. 
• Migrating the configuration and data from the current deployment to new Appliances.
• Onboarding the additional log sources as listed in the Statement of Work.
• Performing fine-tuning for the new log sources added.
• Acceptance testing.
• Knowledge transfer sessions.
• Post-implementation support.

The time frame for this project was December 23, 2021, to July 15, 2022. We collaborated with our registered business partner IBM. A total of eight experts had been working tirelessly to make this project a success, six from the IE Team and two from IBM. Our client was happy with the results and gave us the following testimonials:

 “CBE team would like to thank you for your professional commitment, especially the achievements on IB and MB out of the BOX custom log integrations are so useful to enhance the cyber security posture of the bank!! Cheers!!”.