Local Government Needs Two Minutes, Instead of Two Hours, to Investigate Potential Threats

Netwrix Auditor enables the IT department of Johnson County, Kansas, to improve its security posture

Irvine, CA, October 17, 2017

Netwrix Corporation, provider of a visibility platform for data security and risk mitigation in hybrid IT environments, announced today that the government of Johnson County in Kansas deployed Netwrix Auditor to minimize the risk of security incidents and bring more structure to its Active Directory and Group Policy.

Johnson County, Kansas, U.S., provides a variety of services to its residents through more than 40 offices, agencies and departments. Its IT department is charged with ensuring the continuity of public services and the safety of the data entrusted to the county. To maintain a proper level of security, the IT team needed to establish control over its Active Directory and Group Policy and gain better insight into the activity of its more than 3,000 users. After all, if aberrant activity went unnoticed, sensitive data could be exposed, processes crucial for citizens could be disrupted, and residents would lose confidence in the county government.

The IT department chose Netwrix Auditor because of its ease of use combined with its high performance. With the solution, Johnson County gained the following benefits:

• Cleaner and stronger Group Policy. With better insight into the system, IT staff were able to detect cloned GPOs that had been applied to multiple OUs at once, causing some groups, computers and users to have elevated permissions. After pinpointing the invalid policies, they rebuilt them, significantly reducing the risk of data loss and data exfiltration.
• Identification of obsolete accounts. Previously, the accounts of some terminated employees were still active, which meant they could freely access the county government’s network and data. Netwrix Auditor enabled the IT department to find and remove over 300 inactive users, eliminating this security hole.
• Faster detection and investigation of suspicious events. IT staff can now trace suspicious insider activity much faster — investigating a typical incident used to take them around two hours, but now they can do it in minutes.

"As a government entity, we are a target for both intruders and malicious insiders. In case of a security incident, Netwrix Auditor will show us what is truly going on in the IT environment in just a click of a mouse. Whether we need a full user activity summary or want to investigate a particular event, Netwrix Auditor will quickly provide the results in easy-to-read format, while before it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The ability to set up alerts on specific events is also invaluable. It is a very powerful solution, absolutely mandatory for any IT person," said Jeremy George, System Administrator for Johnson County, Kansas.

"Government institutions need to maintain high-quality public service and safeguard the sensitive data entrusted to them. To continue serving the community, they have to keep the security of their IT infrastructure at the highest level. Complete visibility into the IT environment enables IT departments to establish proper control over the network. This in turn allows them to better manage security risks, prevent data breaches and avoid disrupting the lives of citizens," said Michael Fimin, CEO and Co-founder of Netwrix.

To read the complete case study, please visit: www.netwrix.com/go/johnson_county

About Netwrix Corporation

Netwrix Corporation was the first vendor to introduce a visibility and governance platform for hybrid cloud security. More than 160,000 IT departments worldwide rely on Netwrix to detect insider threats on premises and in the cloud, pass compliance audits with less effort and expense, and increase productivity of IT security and operations teams. Founded in 2006, Netwrix has earned more than 100 industry awards and been named to both the Inc. 5000 and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 lists of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. For more information, visit www.netwrix.com

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Media contact:

Erin Jones
Avista PR for Netwrix
Phone: 704.664.2170

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