Financial Services (Insurance)

Built on risk, built in Venice

For centuries, Venice was one of the world's great centers of international trade: a city built on opportunity and on understanding risk. It is why, nearly two hundred years ago, Generali established its presence there, at the Procuratie in Piazza San Marco. Today, it is one of the world's largest and oldest insurance companies, with operations across Europe and beyond.

That founding discipline still defines how Generali runs its technology. "Generali's main business is based on risk management, because it is an insurance company," explains Riccardo Bortoletti, a Senior System Network Administrator who has spent 30 years with the company. "Risk is important at every level, and also at the technical level. That's why we are focused on using the best technology." And as the environment around that technology changes: more complex systems, faster-moving threats, tighter regulation… risk must be managed every day, not periodically.

Generali's monitoring team is responsible for an estate of 16,000 connected devices spanning every architecture. With an estate of that size, the ability to locate a device the moment an issue occurs is essential to supporting colleagues and restoring service quickly.

Full landscape clarity across 16,000 devices

Generali uses Cisco IQ for visibility and security across its infrastructure. "With Cisco IQ, we know everything about each of these devices," says Bortoletti. "Where it is. How it's performing. Is it supported? When is end of life?"

The difference is not only the depth of the data, but the speed of getting to it. Previously, engineers worked manually on reports to extract exactly what they were looking for. With Cisco IQ, a ready-to-use document is available without any additional processing. "The graphic interface is very user friendly and also supported by AI," Bortoletti notes. "With the AI, we can shorten the time we need to get a result." The incredible thing, he adds, is that all of it happens on one screen.

The response from the wider team has been immediate. Colleagues across the monitoring team have been struck by how quickly Cisco IQ returns a complete answer: a single pane of glass holding all the information they need.

Demonstrating resilience, faster

In an environment where the window to respond keeps narrowing, customers trust Generali to be there when it matters most. "In the post-Mythos environment," says Bortoletti, "Cisco IQ is even more important… it's simply not acceptable to spend days following up on a security advisory," he says. With Cisco IQ, what was four days is now ten minutes to identify which assets are exposed to a given vulnerability and produce an actionable report.

Resilience isn't optional in insurance. Regulations like DORA require the company to demonstrate that readiness on demand. "With DORA compliance, Cisco IQ changed the game in managing the data and in demonstrating that we are ready to support these new requirements," says Bortoletti. Reporting that once took weeks is now prepared in days.

Lifecycle auditing has compressed even further. A last-day-of-support audit that normally took two days and was performed by hand is now produced automatically by Cisco IQ, delivering an audit-ready answer in ten minutes. For Bortoletti's team, that represents a 90% gain in operational efficiency.

A partnership with Cisco Services

Underpinning the technology is Cisco Support - Standard across Generali's entire Cisco ecosystem. "Cisco Support - Standard is important for us because it enables us to have all the features we need from Cisco IQ," says Bortoletti. "It allows us to get a constant level of support."

In practice, it functions less like a support contract and more like a partnership: “the Cisco Services support team is very important for us, because they help us to improve in the usage of this tool and in the knowledge of our infrastructure," Bortoletti says.

For an engineer three decades into his career with the company, the appeal is straightforward. "Working at Generali is very important to me because we have the possibility to work with the best technology in the market. And Cisco IQ is one of the most amazing pieces of technology, because it introduces a lot of new features that we never had before."

Generali's history is a part of the history of Europe. Today, that history opens its doors at the Procuratie, The Home of The Human Safety Net in Piazza San Marco, where Generali's global foundation welcomes the public. And tomorrow, together with Cisco, Generali has the clarity and resilience for what comes next.