A Data-Driven Approach to Cyber Defense: CWT’s Experience with Onyxia
“
With Onyxia, everything is intuitive; the team now spends time analyzing results rather than populating them. Onyxia helps us understand where we’re excelling and where we need more focus. We can reprioritize efforts based on real data rather than assumptions.”
Harshal Mehta
VP & CISO, CWT
Key Outcomes and Benefits
280+ Hours Saved
on manual data collection on an annual basis
10x the Value
of governance and observability tools at a fraction of the maintenance and overhead
3 Short Months
to improved operational efficiency with better contextualized intelligence
About CWT
CWT is a global leader in business travel and meetings management.
The company has over 12,000 employees and serves companies and organizations across more than 100 countries. With a focus on connecting people and driving productivity, CWT provides innovative travel solutions and end-to-end services across air, hotel, ground transportation, and meetings & events. The company’s scale and reach demand a sophisticated approach to cybersecurity, ensuring that sensitive client data and critical business operations remain protected in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
The Challenge of Disconnected, Point-in-Time Security Data
Before adopting Onyxia, CWT’s security team's data collection and reporting process was fragmented and manual. This manual, reactive approach was inefficient and didn't provide the real-time, intuitive, and preemptive insights CWT’s security team needed. Harshal Mehta, CWT’s CISO, recognized the need for a solution that could not only streamline reporting but also deliver actionable insights across multiple security domains.
At the operational level, Harshal’s team needed a clear picture of their day-to-day performance, including efficiency and workload, to help them prioritize tasks and respond to evolving threats or seasonal shifts in their capacity. At the leadership level, Harshal required a comprehensive, real-time overview of the security program on a monthly and quarterly basis in order to report to various stakeholders – from the executive leadership team to the audit committee and the board of directors.
“It’s a pretty critical piece of our program,” shared Harshal, “to have metrics measured and then show maturity on how the metrics are evolving quarter on quarter, year on year, with all the investments we are adding either through tools or people in the program.”
Prior to onboarding Onyxia, CWT relied on manual processes across multiple tools and spreadsheets. Quarterly reports for the audit committee and monthly leadership dashboards required significant team effort, taking hours to aggregate, verify, and interpret data. Harshal explained, “Every team would be spending at least four hours per 6 verticals every month just creating and interpreting dashboards, making sure the data is accurate and there are no false positives. With Onyxia, everything is intuitive; the team now spends time analyzing results rather than populating them.”
CWT Strengthens Cybersecurity Oversight and Executive Reporting with Onyxia’s Preemptive Platform
Centralizing Security Metrics and Compliance Across a Complex Global Organization
CWT’s cybersecurity program spans multiple compliance standards, including PCI-DSS, SOC 2, NIST 800-53, and NIST 800-171, alongside regional regulations in the UK and China. Harshal emphasized the importance of contextual reporting: “Like any organization, we have exceptions and accepted risks at the executive level. It’s an opportunity to showcase those to the board and make a case for additional resources.”
He further expanded: “I work with a lot of insurance carriers. They will come up with predictive analysis, but it's not based on data. You just feed them answers to questions like: What is your downtime? If you have a cyber incident, how many customers would be impacted? How many PII records do you have? It's all based on a framework rather than actual data.”
With Onyxia, Harshal can leverage data-driven insights to reduce potential risk exposure, inform capital investment plans, and reprioritize existing resources.
Seamless Integration Across Existing Security Tools Reduces Complexity and Maximizes Value
Integration with CWT’s existing security stack, including CrowdStrike, ServiceNow, Okta, and Ping, was straightforward, requiring no custom professional services. “It was plug and play. We were able to get it on board and implemented it quickly. That’s what most CISOs want - an architecture that’s open and doesn’t require constant maintenance,” said Harshal.
The platform’s centralized approach also reduces manual workload while increasing program transparency. “Now we can log in on a mobile device and see real-time metrics. My team isn’t spending time populating data anymore. They’re focused on efficiency and maturity of the program,” he said.
Benchmarking Performance, Driving Operational Efficiency, and Demonstrating Program Maturity
CWT leverages Onyxia’s platform to benchmark performance across multiple domains and guide resource allocation. By visualizing metrics like time to contain vulnerabilities and incident response times, CWT identifies areas for improvement and ensures compliance mandates are met. “It helps us understand where we’re excelling and where we need more focus. We can reprioritize efforts based on real data rather than assumptions,” Harshal noted.
Onyxia’s platform also supports contextualized operational intelligence, enabling the team to track and monitor SLA compliance across assets. The capability provides confidence that no critical gaps are being overlooked.
Furthermore, Onyxia has automated CWT’s executive reporting, a process that used to be a major time drain. “We now use automated reports and PowerPoint presentations from the platform to communicate program maturity to our leadership. This has been a significant time saver and has been well-received by the executive team, allowing us to have more strategic, data-backed conversations,” shared Harshal.
A Partner Committed to Customer Success and Future Growth
Harshal emphasized the importance of Onyxia’s commitment to customer success. “It’s not just about selling a product, it’s about ensuring we’re successful. They’ve been responsive, flexible, and genuinely invested in helping us achieve our goals,” he said.
CWT now has a scalable platform that combines compliance, operational efficiency, and predictive analytics, positioning the organization to respond preemptively to emerging threats. “I would say this is the future,” remarked Harshal. “We’re not just cooking up data. We can see real-time, intuitive insights – which change every day, every minute – in whatever matrix or dashboard we want to create. That’s the power of the platform,” Harshal concluded.