School District Combats Ransomware and Saves over $60,000 with Netwrix Auditor

Complete visibility into activity across the environment enabled Whiteriver Unified School District to withstand a ransomware attack and secure vital information

Irvine, CA, August 8, 2017

Netwrix Corporation, provider of a visibility platform for user behavior analysis and risk mitigation in hybrid environments, announced today that Whiteriver Unified School District uses Netwrix Auditor to gain centralized control over its complex infrastructure, ensure data security and streamline compliance with state requirements.

Whiteriver Unified School District (WUSD) is located in the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, U.S. Its IT infrastructure is distributed across five schools. With almost 3,000 users and a high turnover rate for employees and students, visibility into insider activity is a must for the IT team. Lack of understanding into what is going on could bring a slew of issues, from data exfiltration and large fines for non-compliance with Arizona state regulations to even being shut down under the federal ordinance.

WUSD chose Netwrix Auditor because its detailed reports give the IT team a clear understanding of user activity on file shares. With the solution, the district achieved the following results:

• Limited ransomware-inflicted damage. Netwrix Auditor enabled WUSD to spot a surge in failed access attempts and thereby detect ransomware encrypting files. Using the solution, they were able to quickly find and disable the account the ransomware was using, saving vital files required for an expense report. Loss of this information would have cost them over $60,000.
• Increased control over rogue employees. Netwrix Auditor reports increase accountability. For example, when curriculum files were suddenly removed, a report identified the culprits as two fired employees. The IT team brought this information to the HR department to emphasize that it is vital for them to notify IT about departing employees in order to prevent violations.
• Continuous compliance. WUSD has to pass an annual external audit and is subject to non-regular audits by the Arizona Auditor General. Netwrix Auditor provides a comprehensive audit trail that enables the IT team to ensure continuous compliance and spend three days instead of a week on reporting.

"Our environment is very dynamic and all the changes in the systems may become confusing. Netwrix Auditor brings order to the confusion. It helps us to uncover internal policy violations and workflow disruptions. You can easily figure out what changes are taking place and get alerts on the most critical one. The product has also been very helpful in detecting accounts infected by viruses, especially ransomware. I can foresee that with the software I will spend 50% less time on audit preparations as well," said Pierre Dehombreux, IT director at Whiteriver Unified School District.

"Academic institutions handle various types of sensitive data and have to safeguard it against ever-growing internal and external threats. On top of this, they need to comply with a variety of regulations, which can be overwhelming for understaffed and underfunded IT teams. Deep visibility across the IT environment enables teams to improve internal workflows and better handle security risks, which is highly appreciated by compliance auditors," said Michael Fimin, CEO and Co-Founder of Netwrix.

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

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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Erin Jones
Avista PR for Netwrix
Phone: 704.664.2170

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