Government / Nodeware® Case Study
IGI Cybersecurity helped a Texas municipality find a cybersecurity solution that complemented its existing security posture, helped it easily manage its network, and protect its valuable data. With a town comprised of nearly 80,000 people with more than 600 employees across 14 different buildings, including police and fire, the IT team knew they needed to go beyond the basics—so they turned to a cutting-edge cybersecurity software that gave them more ownership over their network security without breaking the bank.
The Challenge
The Town of Flower Mound, Texas is like most small municipalities; it relies on a small team of IT professionals to handle its cybersecurity needs. The town has a limited budget and set amount of resources to allocate toward cybersecurity, yet the information the town keeps on its network is extremely valuable to cyber criminals—from residents’ personal data to police records and even security footage.
The Flower Mound IT team needs intuitive and easy-to-manage solutions to help manage its security while staying within a tight budget. The town also has to manage security for a large number of assets that all present unique risks, such as security cameras, IoT devices, phones, laptops, and more.
The Solution
The town was able to secure its network and ensure that its valuable data is kept private by adding a cutting-edge vulnerability scanning tool to its cybersecurity strategy.
The Nodeware® vulnerability scanning tool gave the Flower Mound IT Team complete visibility into its networks and the assets on them. With that level of visibility, the town could clearly identify its network vulnerabilities and remediate them in order to close any critical security gaps.
“I’ve been with the town almost 5 years, and with cybersecurity obviously getting a lot of attention, I had been looking at new things to do to stay out of the news,” said Rob Silvy, IT Manager for Flower Mound. “We’ve done all the ‘normal’ security stuff places do—get updates, make sure we’re patching, antivirus is installed, firewalls rules are correct—but we thought it was time to do vulnerability scanning.”
Silvy’s intuition was right. When they did their first network scan with Nodeware, which takes a matter of minutes, they were surprised by not only the number and type of assets on the network, but their level of exposure based on some low vulnerability scores. Silvy and his team immediately saw the value of Nodeware through the identification of all the town’s network assets—and the vulnerabilities that came with them.
“The Windows boxes were in green, but all the IoT devices were red or yellow,” Silvy explained, referring to the “red”, “yellow”, and “green” labels that Nodeware gives assets based on their level of exposure. “There was a known vulnerability on many of our 180 SONY Security Cameras at the time, but SONY hadn’t alerted us to that.”
Silvy, who considers himself more of a jack-of-all-trades IT professional than a security expert, was able to use the data provided by Nodeware to easily apply the firmware updates to the cameras, which immediately changed their vulnerability level to “green.”
This is the first of many examples of how Nodeware’s security dashboard and alerts has helped Silvy and the team continuously manage their network and reduce their risk of a cyber-attack.
“I keep tabs on anything that’s not green. We make it part of our standard procedure,” Silvy said.
The Result
Silvy and his team of six IT pros have found the Nodeware interface easy to use and simple to manage. His team is able to constantly monitor their cybersecurity posture by way of the intuitive Nodeware dashboard, clearly identifying any areas of exposure so they can quickly patch them and keep their networks secure.
“Any solution we buy has to be simple and intuitive otherwise it’s not of value to us,” Silvy said. “We’re not a large city with a gigantic IT team with one person focused on security all day.”
In fact, Silvy said they have purchased systems in the past but had to abandon them because of complexity. As IT specialists, they need cybersecurity solutions that are simple to manage and actionable.
“We can’t work with complicated,” he said. “With Nodeware, I didn’t need any training. We got it installed, I started poking around the dashboard, and it couldn’t have been more simple to learn.”
Flower Mound has been a customer of IGI’s through Blue Reef Networks for more than a year and has just renewed its annual Nodeware license to continue to successfully manage and secure its networks.
Blue Reef Networks
17304 Preston Road
Suite 800
Dallas, TX 75252