OVERVIEW

South Carolina State Library is more than just books on shelves. Located in Columbia, South Carolina, the official state library and government agency provides library and document-repository services to government agencies throughout the Palmetto State. It also provides traditional library and internet services to the public. With cybersecurity being a huge priority, South Carolina State Library turned to Trend Micro to modernize its cyber protection.

CHALLENGES

Public use of library computers can expose the South Carolina State Library to viruses and other threats.

“We often see malicious documents and viruses on flash drives people bring into the library. There is always a risk,” says Matthew Guzzi, information systems administrator at the South Carolina State Library.

As a part of the state government, the South Carolina State Library considers its data protection to be paramount.

“We needed to make some changes to bolster our defenses,” says Guzzi.

After hearing of a ransomware attack that took down another South Carolina library for weeks, Guzzi and his team took a fresh look at their own security protections. Patches and updates were possible, but they weren’t user-friendly. Also, customer service from the library’s existing security vendor was not meeting expectations.

1 - Alyson Klein, “Cyberattacks on Schools Soared During the Pandemic,” Education Week, March 10, 2021

WHY TREND

In 2018, a new IT director joined the South Carolina State Library and highly recommended Trend Micro, prompting the library to switch solutions to modernize security protections.

Guzzi says he was excited about Trend Micro from the beginning and keeps up on the company’s latest innovations and vision.

“Partnering with Trend Micro offers us a platform to protect all our environments, and we get to work with a company that’s both visionary and innovative,” says Guzzi.

SOLUTION

The library moved to Trend Micro Apex One™ as a Service in 2020 because it allows users to receive updates automatically wherever they are so security protections stay up to date.

The South Carolina State Library’s security team also appreciates the strong detection protection from Trend Micro Apex One as a Service.

“Ransomware is growing more sophisticated, and public agencies like ours are a target, so it’s important to have a strong ransomware blocker in place,” says Guzzi.

The library adopted Trend Micro Vision One™ in May 2021 after experiencing immediate value during their trial period when a virus was detected on a library computer. The cyber defense center with XDR capabilities collects and correlates data across email, endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, and networks, enabling visibility and analysis that can be difficult to achieve otherwise.

“I like the customizable dashboards in Trend Micro Vision One. We see potential attacks come in and how they relate to our environment. It looks at all indicators of compromise to paint a bigger picture of what is going on,” says Guzzi.

RESULTS

“Security detection with Trend Micro is a night-and-day improvement from our previous security vendor,” says Guzzi. “With our previous solution, we didn’t have the necessary visibility or response tools available to take action. Trend Micro solutions do a better job of blocking threats, whether they are malicious URLs, drive-bys, or a link someone clicks on by mistake. It stops infections or actions immediately to protect the network. When you buy Trend Micro solutions, you don’t have to sacrifice consolidation for best-inbreed, industry-leading technology.”

Trend Micro solutions have reduced the amount of time library IT staff must dedicate to security.

“With Trend Micro Vision One, we have better data. We see what’s happening on each machine, and we get all the information so we can investigate. We’ve had to reimage fewer machines,” says Guzzi.

Implementation also beat expectations. While Guzzi had planned for it to take weeks, his team had Trend Micro Apex One as a Service up and running in three days.

“We were expecting to uninstall and reinstall agents on machines manually, but we just had to set it up and move through the console,” says Guzzi.

Guzzi also appreciates the improvement in customer support compared to the library’s previous vendor.

“Trend Micro customer service is the best I’ve ever had. They usually respond in less than 24 hours. And they always go above and beyond to see that my issue is resolved,” says Guzzi.