OVERVIEW

With close to one million residents, this law enforcement agency accommodates one of the largest jails in the state. In addition to protecting public safety, the County Sheriff’s Office is focused on protecting data, using Trend Micro Apex One and Trend Micro Apex Central™.

CHALLENGES

Law enforcement agencies are a common target for cybercriminals. After several agencies within the state were hit with ransomware recently, the County Sheriff’s Office leaders wanted to learn from those experiences and ensure they were protected. Since its jurisdiction includes a large inmate facility, this County Sheriff’s Office collects a lot of data.

The facility has a full medical wing that collects patient data (including IoT data from medical devices) and a payment card industry (PCI) group that collects credit card information from families to fund inmate canteen accounts. Most of this data is collected digitally.

“We have everything a corporate business or hospital would have, but it’s all under one roof. Hackers see us as a prime target for bragging rights and to steal personally identifiable information. Our data is an important asset, and we need to protect it,” says the IT Lead at the County Sheriff’s Office.

With a few thousand employees that could potentially expose the organization to vulnerabilities, the County Sheriff’s Office needed a strong security partner.

“If a threat hits us, public safety could be put at risk—deputies may not be able to respond to incidents, medical history could be compromised, and overall operations could crash. Our network, endpoints, and email are attacked all day long. We needed very strong protection and backups in place,” says IT Lead.

WHY TREND

“As a longtime customer, we know Trend Micro’s endpoint security is very reliable when it comes to catching ransomware, malware, and spyware. Having a partnership with a strong security vendor is the key to keeping the lights on, the bad guys out, and the good guys working,” says the IT Lead.

Trend Micro’s solutions also help provide the County Sheriff’s Office with a clearer picture of external threats.

“A lot of police agencies don’t understand the systems that support them and convincing people you need to invest in security is often a big hill to climb. Trend Micro allows us to see and share what we’re up against in this unique atmosphere,” says the IT Lead.

Reliability and flexibility were other key reasons in choosing Trend Micro.

“I can monitor our systems 24/7 from anywhere. With the previous solution I used, monitoring sometimes worked and sometimes it didn’t. Trend Micro has proven to be reliable,” says IT Lead.

SOLUTION

The County Sheriff’s Office recently migrated 2,800 machines to Trend Micro Apex One—a solution that combines vulnerability protection and antivirus for endpoints.

“Prior to Trend Micro Apex One, we were running two servers on every device, which is difficult with 2,800 machines. Trend Micro Apex One combines the two, allowing us to manage all of our devices through one agent, and Trend Micro Apex Central allows for a higher level of management with one interface. We get more tools, but use less equipment,” says IT Lead.

RESULTS

The County Sheriff’s Office didn’t encounter a single problem during the migration process. The migrations also happened quickly, which is critical, especially for deputies in the field who can’t be offline.

“Since dispatchers track deputies through GPS, as well as their calls, data is constantly going back and forth. Their systems cannot be down. With Trend Micro, upgrading was easy. Deputies can restart whenever they want and they are still protected,” adds IT Lead.

Trend Micro Apex One also protects the County Sheriff’s Office endpoints from unintended exposure to vulnerabilities. The solution had already picked up 33 known threats within the first few weeks of use.

“Trend Micro Apex One blocks those suspicious, dangerous websites. If a user downloads something suspicious, it’s automatically captured, blocked, and reported,” says IT Lead.

WHAT'S NEXT

The County Sheriff’s Office is currently considering Trend Micro Vision One™ to add a forensics layer to its solution and enable the use of artificial intelligence and extended detection and response.

“Ransomware is a big problem right now with every agency and every commercial organization. With Trend Micro, we don’t have to worry about ransomware. Trend Micro constantly monitors our environment for new ransomware threats and blocks them.”