Game-changing IT security with Unity, Orca Security, and Google Cloud

Every month, more than 1 million creators worldwide use Unity’s expansive platform to develop games, create beautiful visual effects, and design everything from electric cars to skyscrapers. The company’s comprehensive suite of solutions makes it easier to create, run, and monetize 2D and 3D content.

Unity has long recognized the importance of security not just to protect critical networks and sensitive information, but also to maintain an always-on, undistracted experience for its users. Every millisecond counts for the platform that is used to make 70% of the top 1,000 mobile games globally, and its infrastructure needs to be optimally resilient against downtime and security threats.

That’s why Unity selected Google Cloud and partner Orca Security to safeguard cloud workloads, data, and users across multi-cloud development and runtime environments. Let’s take a look at how the partnership between Orca and Google Cloud helps Unity maintain optimal visibility across their IT landscape for more reliable, secure, and dynamic performance.

 A ‘better together’ approach to security

We know that security is a team effort, and we work with our robust ecosystem of Google Cloud partners to provide customers with the best possible solutions to each of their unique needs. Orca is a powerful part of that ecosystem that is built on Google Cloud and leverages integrations with our native security capabilities.

The Google Cloud partnership with Orca benefits customers like Unity thanks to how Orca integrates with Google Cloud security solutions like Chronicle SIEM and Security Command Center, and brings the data into Orca’s Unified Data Model and SideScanning that supports Google Cloud workloads.

“We want to adopt capabilities that deliver security across Unity as fast as possible, and without the partnership between Orca and Google Cloud, we would not be able to do so quickly, proactively, and efficiently,” said Justin Somaini, chief security officer at Unity. “We recognize the valuable capabilities coming from Orca that are born out of the relationship between Orca and Google Cloud. We benefit from their partnership.”

Orca combines with Google Cloud secure-by-design infrastructure to help customers like Unity keep a close eye on all assets across multi-cloud environments, safeguarding data, networks, and end users from threats as they arise.

Advanced use of APIs for security and performance monitoring

 Unity first chose to work with Orca because it needed an automated, out-of-the-box security solution that seamlessly integrates with Google Cloud APIs and provides full asset visibility. Orca also proved to be the right solution thanks to its efficient scaling across Unity’s entire digital and physical infrastructure, including multi-cloud environments, applications, and endpoints. 

Orca leverages Google Cloud API updates to introduce new features and capabilities that go far beyond identifying security risks and preventing attacks such as denial-of-service and ransomware. For example, Orca reveals idle, paused, and stopped workloads, as well as orphaned applications and endpoints that require consolidation or decommissioning.

Unity also looked for an alternative to resource-intensive virtual security agents, as they tended to be challenging to deploy and could negatively impact performance.

“Orca’s Unified Data Model and SideScanning technology provides full security visibility — and coverage — across clouds and endpoints while eliminating the need for resource-intensive agents,” said Vijay Sharma, security leader at Unity. “This in turn helps us maintain peak system performance while continuously scanning for vulnerabilities, malware, misconfigurations, and weak or leaked passwords.”

Improving performance and collaboration across teams

 Security and DevOps teams have become more unified and performant since Unity began using Orca.

Unity leverages Orca to build secure solutions that mitigate new threats and fully comply with strict international data protection standards such as PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and NIST.  Orca’s cross-departmental capabilities empower the security team to closely collaborate with developers on strategic, high-level projects.

Unity has seen an improvement in its IT security and DevOps working relationship, as the two teams access a single, centralized source of truth presented in a common language. Orca’s real-time data delivery smoothly integrates with Unity’s security workflows alongside DevOps compilers and ticketing systems like Jira.

“Instead of boiling the ocean, we jointly analyze the threat landscape in real time and make informed decisions about how to best secure our products with DevOps,” said Sharma.

The developers Unity serves have also enjoyed the benefits of this more dynamic and modernized approach to security automation. As automated cloud security is now embedded into the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) process with Orca, developers can quickly scan Infrastructure as Code templates and container images in minutes rather than hours.

Orca’s constant monitoring of cloud provider logs and threat intelligence feeds help Unity proactively identify anomalous events, expediting key decision making processes. 

“Orca’s single pane-of-glass dashboards display actionable data and alerts that further increase operational efficiency while reducing mean-time-to-resolution,” said Somaini. 

With more than 70% of the top 1,000 mobile games globally being created with Unity, countless developers and end users will feel the positive impacts of Unity’s work with Orca and Google Cloud in the years ahead.

To learn more about how partners help organizations make the most of Google Cloud, you can visit our partner page.