CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

Sophos Solutions Meetthe Evolving Needs of aCanadian Municipality

Customer-at-a-Glance
City of CastlegarIndustry
Municipal government
Number of Users
105 users across multiple city departments
25 servers
Sophos Solutions
Sophos Central Endpoint Protection
Sophos Intercept X
Sophos Intercept X Advanced for Server
Sophos SG UTM
Sophos Access Points
Sophos Phish Threat

City of Castlegar A customer success story

The City of Castlegar in British Columbia, Canada
is at the midpoint between Vancouver andCalgary. The municipal government of this sceniccity, nestled in the Selkirk Mountains, consistsof multiple departments with 105 employees:
City Hall, the mayor’s office, council meeting
office, fire services, public works, and an airportthat serves 80,000 passengers annually.

Challenges‘Sophos Intercept X
was extremely
helpful and efficientat that critical
moment. I can’teven imagine
what would have
happened to the city,
its departments,
and its services
if there wasn’t
anti-ransomwarein place.’
David Bristow
Information Technology Manager
City of Castlegar

City of Castlegar A customer success storyÌÌ Maximize finite resources to provide the same level of robustsecurity that would be deployed at a big city governmentÌÌ Provide employees and departments with diverse needs
with an integrated security system that keeps data safe
and systems running so they can better serve the city
ÌÌ Save time, increase efficiency, and reduce the number ofhelp-desk calls related to endpoint security issues
ÌÌ Minimize downtime and provide proactive protection
when ransomware and other advanced threats strikeCan a small city enjoy the same level ofsecurity as a big city?
When it comes to securing users, data, and the city’s 25 servers,
information technology manager David Bristow’s biggest
challenge is providing the same level of security as a larger citywhile making the most of limited resources and a tight budget.
As a senior manager and one-man IT department, Bristow’s
responsibilities are wide-ranging – from planning technology
strategies and budgets to fielding IT requests and resolving
security issues, ensuring employees in departments with diverse
requirements can do their jobs properly and keep things runningsmoothly. Among his duties, he oversees the data center at City
Hall and transactions handled by finance. These include such as
fees and property taxes, emergency dispatch systems for the fire
department, electronically controlled public works systems, andelectronic ticketing at the airport. All of these critical municipal services
involve storage and transit of confidential data – from personallyidentifiable data of residents to the city’s financial information.

Bristow was looking for a better way to protect endpoints
and servers against today’s ransomware threats andother sophisticated malware. The city’s existing endpoint
protection fell short, and often proved time-consuming
to manage, requiring a great deal of manual intervention.
Bristow needed a more efficient and automated way toproactively manage security citywide and apply the latest
security upgrades to both existing and new systems.

How does Sophos UTM
safeguard a municipal networkwith multiple locations?
The City of Castlegar has been a Sophos customer
since 2013. At that time, the municipality deployed
Sophos Unified Threat Management (UTM), which
provides all-in-one, next-generation network
protection across the city’s multiple locations. This
offered capabilities including wireless security, webprotection, sandboxing to isolate and analyze evasivethreats, email protection, and web server protection.
For secure wireless connectivity for thedistributed offices, the city uses Sophos Access
Points that plug directly into Sophos UTM.
“I can honestly say that Sophos UTM has been completely
stable for us. It’s easy to upgrade devices and, in reviewing
the UTM logs, I’ve seen quite a number of threats that havebeen blocked over time. Essentially, I don’t have to worry
about network security. I know that Sophos is working andprotecting our city network as it should,” declares Bristow.

How does a city evolve its
endpoint security to keep up
with advanced threats?
Since Bristow had a positive experience with Sophos
in the area of network security, he wanted to explore
Sophos endpoint solutions with the idea of buildingout an integrated security architecture where all
the components work together and are managed
centrally. Another key goal was to reduce help-deskcalls to free up his time so that he could efficiently andeffectively manage high-priority tasks and make surecity services were being delivered as they should.
Bristow worked closely with his trusted Sophos partner,
Opus Consulting Group, to map out a more efficientand proactive approach for the city’s endpoint security.

City of Castlegar A customer success story

Mehernosh Chemi, senior enterprise sales executive
at Opus, recommended a multi-layered solution:
Sophos Central Endpoint Security, complemented
by Sophos Intercept X and Sophos Intercept X forServer to specifically protect against ransomware – allmanaged from a centralized, cloud-based console.
“The goal was to provide simplicity and to check off all thesecurity requirements that just about any environment
would have. With every product or solution that wepresent to our customers, we focus on what it brings tothe table and are not trying to merely sell the latest andgreatest in terms of the features and functionalities. For
the City of Castlegar and, indeed, any municipality withevolving security needs, we feel that Sophos is an ideal
solution – especially for protecting against advanced
threats like ransomware,” states Chemi. “We brought
Sophos Intercept X to Bristow’s attention, and after anin-depth presentation, he fully understood the value of theproduct and made the decision to move ahead with it.”
Sophos Central Endpoint Security now provides thecity of Castelgar with well-rounded and comprehensive
protection for endpoints and data. The solution combines
multiple technologies: signatureless anti-malware;
malicious traffic detection; data loss prevention; andweb, application, and device control. As an added layerof protection, Sophos Intercept X safeguards both
endpoints and mission-critical servers, blocking awide variety of attacks. It detects never-seen-beforemalware with deep learning, stops ransomware withunique Sophos anti-ransomware technology, and denies
attacker tools with signatureless exploit prevention.

What’s the best way to simplify
security management?
The unified Sophos Central console provides a single
pane of glass that allows Bristow to manage all of hisSophos solutions – network, endpoint, and wireless –from a central web interface. Bristow no longer manually
pushes updates out to endpoints, saving him timeand effort and enabling him to focus on other tasks
that demand his attention. In addition, the easy-toconfigure console automatically prioritizes alerts, shares
threat intelligence, provides default policies that follow
users, and offers detailed and summary reporting.

City of Castlegar A customer success story‘For the City of Castlegar and, indeed, any municipality
with evolving security needs, we feel that Sophos is an
ideal solution – especially for protecting against advanced
threats like ransomware.’Mehernosh Chemi
Senior Enterprise Sales Executive
Opus Consulting Group

What happens when ransomware
meets Sophos Intercept X?
The new Sophos solution set was put to the test quite
quickly after deployment when a ransomware attack
targeted the file server. Almost immediately—in mere
nanoseconds—Sophos Intercept X locked down the server
and automatically cleaned up the ransomware threat,
preventing any damage and resulting in minimal downtime.
“Sophos Intercept X was extremely helpful and efficient atthat critical moment. I can’t even imagine what would have
happened to the city, its departments, and its services if
there wasn’t anti-ransomware in place,” relates Bristow.
“Sometimes it’s challenging to convince stakeholders andfinancial decision makers about investing in security. But now
they recognize the value of the Sophos solution, because it
protected us beyond measure.”With a view to the future, Bristow plans to collaborateclosely with Opus Consulting to expand the Sophos
footprint by adding next-generation Sophos Firewall
XG within the year. He’s looking forward to gaining
additional visibility into the city’s network, users, andapplications directly from the control center, which will
help him solve issues proactively—before they become
real problems. With Sophos Firewall XG, the City ofCastlegar will further elevate its security with yet anotherlayer of protection that will block unknown threats,
automate incident response, and expose hidden risks
on the network. “We know where we want to go when it
comes to the Sophos solutions and working with Opus.
Securing our city, our departments, and our citizens isimportant – with Sophos we are certain we are protecting
everything just like any city would,” concludes Bristow.

Chemi believes the experience was eye-opening.
“In terms of evolution, it started off with Opus Consulting
solely talking about protecting the city’s endpoints. After
spending time with David and the city as a trusted advisor,
we knew it made sense to scale the solutions to thesophisticated landscape. Sophos Intercept X was anotherlayer of protection that we added to Castlegar’s environment– and a logical choice. It simply worked by keeping theransomware from affecting the entire city,” he asserts.

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