Customer Success Stories
“ForeScout CounterACT solved our data security problem perfectly.”
Todd Frazier
System Administrator
Culpeper County Government
Todd FrazierSystem Administrator
Culpeper County Government
Culpeper County Protects Confidential Data with ForeScout CounterACT
Challenge:
- To protect their classified data, Culpeper County Government needed an automated way to prevent non-employees from gaining access to their network.
- To facilitate compliance with government regulations, they wanted to restrict the use of applications such as IM and Skype.
- Budgets and resources were limited. Three people ran Culpeper’s entire IT department. They needed a solution that was easy to deploy and economical.
Solution:
- Systems Administrator Todd Frazier and his colleague Anthony Soucek looked at a variety of options, including wireless intrusion prevention and NAC solutions from Cisco and other vendors. They found that ForeScout CounterACT was the only product that could be deployed without the need to upgrade their switches or make major changes to their network infrastructure. They chose ForeScout CounterACT because it was the easiest and most cost-effective solution that met their needs.
- According to Frazier:
“We chose ForeScout CounterACT because it was a drop-in solution. It worked with what we had - all our network equipment, all our endpoint devices. No device upgrades, no massive software rollout. Our entire IT department is just three people, so we really wanted an easy solution to our problem. And the amount of visibility and control that ForeScout gave us is amazing.”
Results:
- Data Protection.
“ForeScout CounterACT solved our data security problem perfectly. It gives us 100% visibility and control. Since we installed ForeScout, we can report with 100% certainty that our classified data has not been breached by unauthorized users.”
- Network Protection.
“Like many local governments, Culpeper County's network is spread across a variety of older buildings where they share space with private businesses. As a result, a Culpeper employee could plug their computer into a random wall jack and unknowingly create a bridge with the network of another organization. This introduced network stability problems and left the network more vulnerable to attack from worms such as Conficker. Using CounterACT, Culpeper County was able to eliminate these points of vulnerability.”
- Speed Regulatory Compliance.
“We needed a way to restrict peer-to-peer and instant messaging to help us comply with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which requires that government entities keep records of all electronic correspondence. CounterACT gave us the only practical solution, enabling us to block non-sanctioned communications such as instant messaging and POP email accounts.”
- Total Visibility
“You can't secure what you can't see. We (Culpeper County IT) wanted to be able to see every device on the network, their interconnections to other network devices, and the security posture of those devices - in real time. With CounterACT, we see everything coming onto our network and can block, allow or enforce and remediate in real-time.”