GCP – How Sabre Corporation implemented a culture of secure innovation with Google Cloud and Palo Alto Networks

Sabre Corporation is committed to driving innovation in the global travel industry and developing solutions that help airlines, hotels, and travel agencies transform the traveler experience and satisfy the ever-evolving travel needs of its customers. 

In order to build these solutions, Sabre moved to the cloud for newer, faster, and more open platform technologies. Sabre’s adoption of Google Cloud was key to paving the way to deliver a new, personalized travel experience.

“Sabre was really embarking on unchartered territory and Google Cloud was the cloud service provider and partner who worked alongside us as a co-champion to help us develop new products and services for our customers that would position us for success well into the future,” said Jason Tice, Senior Director Security Architecture, Identity & Access Management, at the Sabre Corporation.

Security is a top priority for Sabre in the migration to the cloud, and the shared responsibility model is at the core of the company’s security approach.To fulfill the company’s security responsibilities, Google Cloud and Palo Alto Networks helped them deploy Prisma Cloud Compute by Palo Alto Networks on Google Cloud.

Moving in the right security direction

Sabre has multiple development centers across the globe with over 3,000 developers. However, extending the security review process to earlier in the software development life cycle required several changes from traditional information security methods, where applications were only secured at runtime. It also requires an understanding of what it means to code securely or to deploy a virtual network or cloud-managed database securely.  

Running Prisma Cloud Compute on Google Cloud enables Sabre to take advantage of Google Cloud’s secure cloud infrastructure and scalability, the latest Google Cloud technologies, and development tools. Whether it’s through Cloud Build or Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), the deep integrations and partnership between Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud helps the company optimize costs and increase development and business efficiencies. 

Sabre leverages microservices and container technologies within GKE to power secure and data-rich applications. This switch away from monolithic applications and toward more agile ones also bolsters efficiencies across the business. 

By shifting security earlier in the development lifecycle, Sabre was able to effectively scale its security across multiple layers and instrumentation platforms. With Google Cloud, Sabre can take advantage of automation to remediate security vulnerabilities in a matter of seconds, not days or weeks. 

The CI/CD pipeline now cultivates the secure-by-design mentality that proactively and intelligently removes threats as they arise. Infrastructure-as-a-Code provides the flexibility and speed necessary to effectively join operational development lifecycles with security capabilities, while Prisma Cloud Compute running on Google Cloud provides an efficient viewpoint of all assets and potential vulnerabilities. 

With the help of Google Cloud and Palo Alto Networks, Sabre Corporation improved their overall security posture by integrating security controls across their CI/CD pipelines to fix flaws before they pushed to production. This adds enhanced collaboration between the DevOps and SecOps—lowering the company’s security vulnerabilities, while increasing the speed in which Sabre can release new products, securely. 

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