CUSTOMER CASE STUDY UGANDA NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (UNBS)

Ugandan Government Organization
Chooses Sophos to Build a
Reliable Cybersecurity Posture
The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) is a statutory body under
the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Co-operatives and it’s mandate includes
formulating and promotion of the use of standards; enforcing standards inprotection of public health and safety and environment against dangerous
and substandard products; ensuring fairness in trade and precision inindustry through reliable measurement systems; and strengthening theeconomy of Uganda by driving quality assurance of locally manufactured
products to improve their competitiveness. As an important government
entity, it was concerned that cyber attackers had such entities in their sights
and were using advanced attacks to cause data breaches. The IT teamwas therefore on the lookout for security solutions that not only helped
build a robust cybersecurity infrastructure, but also worked in tandemwith one another to safeguard the organization’s network, endpoints andserver. Impressed with Sophos’ strong product portfolio across networkand endpoint, their search for a security vendor ended at Sophos.

CUSTOMER-AT-A-GLANCE
Company NameUganda National Bureauof Standards (UNBS)
Industry
GovernmentWebsite
www.unbs.go.ug
Number of Users
420Sophos Solutions
G310 XG Firewall (Full Guard)
420 licenses - Central Intercept X
Advanced with EDR (CIXA EDR)
16 licenses - Central Intercept X
Advanced for Server (SVRCIXA)CUSTOMER CASE STUDY UGANDA NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (UNBS)‘Before switching to Sophos, we experienced plenty of virus attacks despite having deployed top-of-theline cybersecurity. For the IT team, peace of mind and confidence in the existing security solutions werealien concepts. We decided to look for a solution that was extremely user-friendly, easy to deploy andwhich gave us the kind of security cover that protected us from advanced threats levelled at our networkand the endpoints. Sophos provides both endpoint security and firewall protection meaning both can work
together easily to combat security risks and this has given me and the IT team tremendous peace of mind.’
Nkwanga Joachim Charles
Manager ICTChallenges
Ì A small IT team facing difficulties in coping withremote work challenges during the lockdown.

Ì Inability to get protection again known
and unknown threats and better visibility
into network assets and traffic.

Ì Failure to get real time insights into
critical IT operations and threat hunting
questions that can help the IT team takeproactive cybersecurity decisions.

Ì Reducing action time on a device even if thedevice isn’t physically present, to drive safety andsecurity when employees are working remotely.

Ì Problems in securing IT infrastructure
throughout the country and managing
deployments from a single location.

The biggest challenge that UNBS faced isessentially faced by all government organizations
across the world. Their data is under constantthreat. Also, the organization’s need to protect itwith cutting-edge security stemmed from thefact that they had suffered from virus attacks
in the past. Mr. Charles and his IT team wereconcerned with the evolving nature of thesethreats and the fact that they could come fromanywhere at any given time. Threat mitigationfrom a growing and diverse attack surface was
the need of the hour. What’s more, the pandemic
led to a move from an in-office work model to awork-from-home model wherein employees areworking remotely. This meant employees wereaccessing corporate resources remotely, which
added another element of risk to the work process.
Moreover, as the IT team was also working remotely,
it was important that they were able to handle
any security issues proactively and remotely.

The overarching challenge was to deploy a robust
cybersecurity infrastructure that addressed
the security needs of an organization that wasworking from home; the organization’s IT securityhad to be flexible and scalable enough to protect
its employees across distributed locations. “Wewere looking at a scenario wherein we had toready our cybersecurity infrastructure for a face
off against more advanced cyberthreats that
could take advantage of a work environment
wherein our employees were not working out of
their office,” says, Mr. Charles. “While we wanted
a cutting-edge security system to bolster ourorganizational network, we also wanted to offer
the best security cover to our employees who wereworking remotely because of the pandemic.”CUSTOMER CASE STUDY UGANDA NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (UNBS)

The Move Towards Sophos
While looking at the various security vendors that
could deliver the layered security cover UNBS
needed, the IT team evaluated the various options
under consideration on four primary parameters– usability, proactive support, customer care, andcomprehensive protection. Sophos came goodon all these parameters and more. The team wasextremely satisfied with the Xstream architecturethat Sophos’ XG Firewall brought to the table and its
ability to offer powerful protection and leading-edge
performance. They were are also impressed withSophos’ EDR solution purpose built for simplifying
IT security operations and threat hunting. The
fact that it is a coming together of EDR with acomprehensive endpoint and server protectionmeans threats are blocked at the door, before they
get a chance to infect the organization’s endpoint.

A Unified Security
Environment with Sophos
With Sophos, UNBS gets a holistic security covermade up of prevention, detection, investigation andresponse across its network and endpoints. This
cover is backed by actionable security intelligencethat both the network and endpoints share witheach other. This guarantees a more integrated
approach towards cybersecurity that is tailormade
to protect against sophisticated threats.
XG Firewall offers all-in-one-protection that
includes a range of security features that help
UNBS stop attacks before they wreak havoc. It’s
high-performance IPS and ATP are configured toprotect against the latest hacks and its superior
web and app control enables Mr. Charles and team
to configure web filtering policies and user andgroup-based application controls. Also, it’s inbuiltVPN secure access solution helps extend thenetwork security to employees who are working
from home. The internet captive portal prevents
unauthorized connections to the UNBS networkand the firewall sends daily network statistics e.g.,sites visited, volume of internet data used, etc.
Sophos Central Intercept X Advanced with
EDR and Central Intercept X Advanced forServer offer UNBS an extensive security
blanket that delivers protection across theirendpoints and server. With in-built AI, Intercept
X deliver signatureless detection to zero in on
both known and unknown threats and exploit
prevention stops techniques used in file-less,malware-less, and exploit-based attacks.

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY UGANDA NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (UNBS)

With EDR, the process of detection andinvestigation are taken many notches higher as
the IT Team can ask for detailed insights into theactivities on UBNS’ server and endpoint. They get
the advantage of proactive security, backed bythreat hunting that detects active adversaries;
protection is a potent mix of defensive andoffensive capabilities. The fact that breaches arestopped before they start, the number of items tobe investigated goes down, which saves a lot oftime for the IT Team.
All Sophos solutions coordinate effectively toidentify isolate and cleanup compromised devices.
Upon threat neutralization, and when the risk oflateral movement is zero, network connectivity isrestored. This happens automatically without any
admin intervention. Also, the solutions deployment
by UNBS can be managed and monitored from
Sophos Central, the cloud-based management
platform for all Sophos deployments. Mr. Charlesand team can investigate potential threats, craftand implement policies and get drill-down visibility
into all installations from a single unified console.

Deployment Results
With Sophos, Mr. Charles and his team have beenable to easily secure and control their countrywide
IT infrastructure. What’s more, they have got
immediate and actionable support, which has
saved a considerable amount of time and effort
for their team. Since, the time they started using
Sophos, they haven’t experienced any virus attacks
and more importantly both their network andsystems are performing much better than before.
“Sophos solutions are user friendly and havegood support, which ensures a lot of time issaved that will otherwise be spent on managing
the different security solutions deployed.
What’s more, EDR features such as automatedthreat identification, Live Response and Live
Discover, has made life simpler for us when it
comes to responding to, and solving all mannerof security incidents,” signs off Mr. Charles.

Find out how we can help
protect your organization.
Visit www.sophos.com

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