Japan Airlines

Japan Airlines leverages Cloudflare to safeguard their employees from malicious emails and reduce operational inefficiencies

Japan Airlines (JAL) is one of Japan’s leading high-quality airlines, with over 35,000 employees. JAL provides domestic and international passenger and cargo services to hundreds of destinations worldwide, striving to contribute to the stable flow of people and commodities. JAL is a critical infrastructure operator providing public transportation with corporate social responsibilities related to information security.

Challenge: Ensuring high level security for Japan Airlines’ email

Japan Airlines takes email security very seriously. With tens of thousands of employees, email is an important means of communication and commerce. Manabu Yamawaki, Assistant Manager of Information Security Strategies Office in the IT Planning & Management department, shares that, “IT security is a common issue in modern society. As a critical infrastructure operator responsible for public transportation, all of our stakeholders rightfully demand an appropriate approach to information security, supported by world-class information technology - it’s one of our corporate social responsibilities.”

Mr Yamawaki likens IT security to flight safety – it is of utmost importance, and cannot be maintained by staying status quo. It needs constant action and evolvement. In order to ensure security, he believes JAL must continue to stay on top of the ever-changing business and IT environment landscape.

JAL needed first-class email security, and the software they were using did not satisfy them adequately. Malware emails were still slipping through the cracks.

“We had another email security product in place, and while we weren’t experiencing major problems, some phishing emails, such as Emotet malware, were still slipping through. So, we started looking for other email solutions, specifically one that could score full marks in terms of email security at the time of the email product change. This was when JAL discovered and switched to Cloudflare.”

Cloudflare brings a new sense of greater functionality

Traditional email security products are tightly coupled with email software in a series of connections, with the security product only handling email security. However, Cloudflare takes full advantage of the native security functions of an organization’s email service.

Mr Yamawaki also observed that Cloudflare had reduced the operational inefficiencies and burden for both the users and administrators. With the previous email solution, if a user received a suspicious email, they would receive a digest email listing all suspicious emails. This required the user to check whether each email was necessary and then take action; now, they only need to check their junk mail folder periodically.

Celebrating the ease of use

For JAL, the Email Security set-up was easy and smooth, with architecture, migration, and operational requirements all completed in only a short period of time - a major boon given their short runway at the time. On top of that, they’re highly satisfied with the level of accuracy in detecting malicious emails and with the API’s ease-of-use.

“I often tell coworkers how Cloudflare Email Security is both simple and easy to use as a cloud-based SaaS solution and discuss how satisfied I am with its high level accuracy.” Manabu Yamawaki, JAL Security Strategy Office

Getting the support they need

Mr Yamawaki has also been pleased with the level of assistance he’s received from Cloudflare support with Premium Success.

“From the introduction of the product up to this day, the Cloudflare team has given us a detailed level of support. Thanks to that, we were able to migrate our email security solution in an exceptionally smooth way. We’ve been able to have regular meetings with the Cloudflare teams where they heard and understood our issues, and equipped us with the necessary information to resolve them.”

“The support teams have told us about functionalities that we might otherwise not know about in our regular usage and are so helpful when we want to know more. There’s a great deal of merit in being able to receive useful advice from them.”

Receiving this level of support and partnership with Cloudflare has proven to be highly beneficial for JAL, as they now have greater peace of mind, knowing that their emails are kept safe from malicious attacks.