Case Study

Ministério Publico do Estado
da Bahia
Brazilian State Government Agency Transforms Device
Compliance and Increases Efficiency with Forescout
100%
antivirus compliance$500,000+40 HOURS

saved over three years fromefficiency gains

saved weekly from automatedcompliance tasks

Overview

Industry
Government

Environment
3,650+ wired and wireless devices
across 70+ offices; 3,400+ employees

Challenge•

Lack of visibility into all devices on
the network•

Continually in reactive versus
proactive mode concerning
cyberthreats•

No way to block noncompliant or
rogue devices from accessing thenetwork

Security Solution••

Forescout platform
Forescout eyeExtend Connect(formerly Open Integration Module)

The Ministério Publico do Estado da Bahia (MPBA) is responsible for the defenseof legal order, the democratic regime and social and individual interests in theState of Bahia, a Brazilian state with more than 13 million citizens. The MPBA
includes the state’s Attorney General’s office plus 70 other offices across the state.
By implementing the Forescout platform, the organization improved its security
posture dramatically. Their first step was to overhaul device compliance. Today,with much less time and effort, 100% of the MPBA’s devices have up-to-date,properly operating antimalware protection. Three-year ROI savings are estimatedto be more than $500,000 USD from efficiency and productivity gains.

Business Challenge“We were almost completely reactive. We needed a way to see problems on theendpoint, register them, mitigate them, and prevent them from happening again.”— Iaçanã Carneiro, Information Security Officer, Ministério Publico do Estado
da Bahia
Whenever the MPBA experienced a security incident, the organization’s small
information security team struggled to determine which endpoints had been
affected, and what steps to take to remediate. Lack of visibility bogged down theIS team as well as impacted business users. They needed a way to view the statusof all endpoints in real time to identify issues, respond faster to incidents and be
more proactive in preventing future unwanted security events. Device complianceand network access control (NAC) were also serious concerns. For instance, they
had no way to know for certain if all endpoints were running the most current
version of an antivirus agent or had proper Windows configurations. They also
lacked the ability to block noncompliant or rogue devices from accessing thenetwork.

Use Cases•••

Device visibility
Network access control
Device compliance

Results•

Rapid time to value—full visibility
within three days thanks toagentless approach and easy
deployment•

40 hours saved weekly fromautomated antivirus compliancechecks and remediation•

Significant ROI—$500,000+
USD over three years—from IT
staff efficiency and businessproductivity gains•

Dramatically improved security
posture due to more proactive
cyber defense•

Foundation laid for future
integrations to enhance existing
security investments and forrobust network access control

Why Forescout?
MPBA Information Security Officer Iaçanã Carneiro and his team began searchingfor a device visibility and control solution. They evaluated leading NAC solutions
and conducted several Proof-of-Concepts (POCs), but each of these products
required installing an agent on every endpoint. “For performance and operational
reasons, we preferred to stay away from agents, so when we discovered Forescout
and its agentless approach, we were definitely interested,” recalls Carneiro. “Whenwe conducted a POC of the Forescout platform and saw how quickly it provided
full visibility and how it allowed us to automate compliance and remediation
activities and access policies, we knew we had found the solution to our visibility
and NAC problems.”
Consequently, the MPBA had XSITE, Forescout’s first certified partner in Latin
America, implement the Forescout platform. (XSITE was also Forescout’s Brazilian
Partner of the Year in 2018 and 2019.)

Business Impact
Fast, Comprehensive Visibility that Empowers More Proactive Defense
Within three days of implementing the Forescout platform, the MPBA had
the comprehensive visibility that it needed to protect the organization moreproactively. For instance, from the Forescout dashboard, the IS team foundsystems with broken, missing or out-of-date antivirus agents and Windows
machines missing patches or major updates. They also identified all the users
who were authenticated on several terminals simultaneously and all machines thatwere vulnerable to specific new threats. “Being able to quickly and easily find andaddress these vulnerability issues before a hacker can take advantage of them isjust one of the ways we have become more proactive,” says Carneiro.

Dramatically Improved Cyber Hygiene with 100% Antivirus Compliance“Forescout has given us
the ability to view andenforce compliance acrossour entire network and toorchestrate responses byintegrating with our existing
security solutions.”— Yuri Araujo, IT Director,
Ministério Publico do Estado daBahia

With the Forescout platform, MPBA has much greater control over the hygiene
and overall security posture of its 3,650+ managed devices. Using Forescout
eyeExtend Connect, the MPBA IS team integrated the Forescout platform with theorganization’s McAfee antivirus software. By doing so, they were able to automate
tasks related to ensuring antivirus compliance. “Today, we have no machine
without a fully functioning antivirus agent,” says Carneiro. “When Forescout
detects a machine with an antivirus issue, it automatically attempts to remediate
and fix the problem. If, for some reason, that doesn’t work, the solution alerts us.”

Extending Benefits Further in the Future
The MPBA IS team also plans to leverage the Forescout solution’s orchestration
capabilities to further enhance the value of existing security investments, suchas its Fortinet next-generation firewall. And although the Forescout platform
currently assesses devices post-connection to the network, the MPBA fully intends
to use it for pre-connect control as well—for instance, to block all noncompliant
and specific peripheral devices from network access. “Although we have multiple
security tools in our environment, the Forescout platform has become one of ourmost important tools for endpoint management,” claims Carneiro, who strongly
advises his peers to conduct a POC to see for themselves. “We have only begun totap its potential.”

Measuring Business Value“Today we only have tocheck the very few cases inwhich Forescout informs
us a problem persists. Thevalue from time savings anda more proactive security
stance is immense.”— Iaçana Carneiro, Information
Security Officer, Ministério Publico
do Estado da Bahia

Thanks to the automation and reduction in time spent remediating incidents
enabled by implementing the Forescout platform, the MPBA IS team already saves
40 hours a week. They also increased the accuracy of their homegrown asset
inventory tool as well as made it faster and easier to physically locate devices
for customer service and identify devices using the organization’s public Wi-Finetwork. Using an ROI tool developed by IDC to quantify the economic value ofusing the Forescout platform, Carneiro calculated savings of $500,000 USD overthree years, primarily from IT staff efficiencies and business productivity gains.
“Today we only have to check the very few cases in which Forescout informs us
a problem persists,” notes Carneiro. “The value from time savings and a moreproactive security stance is immense.”

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San Jose, CA 95134 USA
Toll-Free (US) 1-866-377-8771
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Support +1-708-237-6591

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