State of Missouri Customer Story
Driving a proactive security posture with FireEye solutions
The State of Missouri’s infrastructure provides many services to six million citizens, countless businesses, visitors, and 50,000 employees in over a 100 locations. Data such as health information, taxes owed, property ownership, and criminal records make a state environment a lucrative target for threat actors.
Michael Roling, chief information security officer at the State of Missouri, remembered watching underprepared states suffering attacks and said, "We saw what a breach did to the trust between the citizens and the government. The State of Missouri resolved to not be the next victim."
Shifting the state’s extensive infrastructure – increasingly accessed by mobile devices and constantly under attack from spear-phishing emails – to a proactive security posture would be difficult. Missouri needed a security vendor capable of defending a statewide network linking tens of thousands of endpoints. It required a suite of solutions seamlessly integrated to secure every possible threat vector.
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State of Missouri improves detection and reduces response time for advanced attacks with FireEye
TESTIMONIAL
“Having the FireEye technologies in place has reduced the number of incidents and it has also decreased the amount of time it takes my staff to respond to alerts. After we adopted the HX endpoint solution the average time to resolve an incident shrank from around 110 hours to 5 hours.”
- Michael Roling, Chief Information Security Officer, State of Missouri
Challenges
Email Delivered Malware
Many of the attempted attacks on the State of Missouri’s infrastructure arrive in the form of spear-phishing emails. The state required a safe way to detonate malicious files sent to any of its offices as well as a proactive security culture to inspire vigilance.
Internet of Things
The state was looking to the future as more users were accessing its infrastructure – and even carrying out their transactions – with phones and tablets. Roling shared why securing this growing segment of devices is one of his office’s main priorities: “It’s about how we can ensure that business is conducted securely from a mobile standpoint, and then how we ensure that the Internet of Things is secure.” It was crucial Missouri deploy advanced mobile device security integrated seamlessly with its other solutions.
Prioritizing Security
With over 40,000 endpoints to monitor and with response time to address each incident averaging dozens of hours the Missouri security team was challenged simply keeping pace with threats. The state takes its constituents’ personal information seriously; it resolved to transition to a proactive security posture and stay ahead of the threat actors. The state takes the integrity of its constituents' information extremely seriously; it resolved to transition to a proactive security posture to stay ahead of threat actors.
State of Missouri Fast Facts
Industry: State and Local Government
Population:
6,083,672
Area: 69,709 square miles
Endpoints: 40,000+
Website:
www.mo.gov
Featured Products
TESTIMONIAL
Results
Monitored, Protected Endpoints
FireEye Endpoint Security (HX) is protecting the tens of thousands of endpoints in the Missouri infrastructure. HX integrates seamlessly with FireEye network and email security – it has given the state visibility into previously unknown threats. HX has even cut Missouri’s response time by “more than 95%,” according to Roling. The solution has been invaluable in building and maintaining the state’s incident response driven security posture.
Integrated, Advanced Email Protection
Missouri deployed FireEye Email Security (EX) and the solution now opens all email and attachments in an isolated environment, detonating any malware without risk to the infrastructure. Even more importantly it integrates with the other FireEye solutions to proactively defend all possible vectors of attack. Roling reported, “When EX discovers malicious email it provides the information to all of the other FireEye technologies to ensure maximum protection. It allows us to stay one step ahead of the threat actors.”
The Infrastructure of the Future
The most recent addition to the state’s deployment is FireEye Mobile Threat Prevention (MTP). The proactive solution will continue to secure Missouri’s infrastructure into the future, even as the mobile traffic increases exponentially.
A Proactive Partnership
FireEye’s solutions give Missouri the insight into its infrastructure necessary to maintain an aggressive security posture. IT shared this intelligence with all levels of the government and the stakeholders; the information raised awareness of what was happening in the environment on a daily basis and the culture shifted to one more focused on security.
In FireEye, the State of Missouri has found a supportive partner able to keep it ahead of the evolving threat landscape. Roling concluded, “I’m very happy with our relationship with FireEye, from sales to support, to engineering. They’ve all been phenomenal.”