South Carolina State Library
Halts attempted attacks with Trend Vision One™ Platform
OVERVIEW
Located in Columbia, South Carolina, the South Carolina State Library is a dual-purpose facility. The first is providing library and document repository services to government agencies throughout the Palmetto State. The second is offering traditional library and internet services to the public. With cybersecurity a top-of-mind priority in both of its roles, the South Carolina State Library turned to Trend Micro to help modernise its protection strategy.
I would give Trend Vision One a perfect score of 10 out of 10. It is undoubtedly the best product in the market today."
Matthew Guzzi
Information Systems Administrator, South Carolina State Library
Industry
Government
Region
United States, North America
IT Environment
Microsoft Windows servers, Microsoft 365, virtual servers, Ubuntu, Linux servers
Solutions
- Protects the library from ransomware attacks frequently targeting public institutions
- Keeps state computers and documents secure with automated security updates
- Improves visibility across endpoints and networks
- Equips the library’s dedicated IT team with robust detection and response capabilities
- Reduces the amount of time staff must dedicate to security monitoring
CHALLENGES
Public use of library computers has the potential to expose the South Carolina State Library to malware and other cyber threats. “We often see malicious documents and [malware] on flash drives people bring into the library. There is always a risk,” says Matthew Guzzi, the organisation’s Information Systems Administrator. “We needed to make some changes to bolster our defences.”
As part of the state government, the South Carolina State Library considers data protection to be of crucial importance. After hearing of a ransomware attack that took down another library in the state for weeks, Guzzi and his team revisited their own security protections. Patches and updates were possible, but they weren’t user-friendly. In addition, customer service from the library’s existing security vendor was not meeting expectations.
WHY TREND
In 2018, a new IT director joined the South Carolina State Library and highly recommended Trend, whose cybersecurity solutions prompted them to make the switch.
“Partnering with Trend offers us a platform to protect all our environments, and we get to work with a company that’s both visionary and innovative,” says Guzzi. “Trend stays ahead of cybersecurity trends and has really raised the bar for the amount of protection we have.”
ASRM has so many benefits—we can see which users and machines are at risk and determine which vulnerabilities are missing. It shows us exactly where we need to focus our efforts...”
Matthew Guzzi
Information Systems Administrator, South Carolina State Library
SOLUTION
The South Carolina State Library moved to Trend Micro Apex One as a Service in 2020 because it allows users to receive updates automatically wherever they are. This helps to ensure data protection measures remain current, strong, and effective, all of which are appreciated by the library’s dedicated security team.
“Ransomware is growing more sophisticated, and public agencies like ours are a target, so it’s important to have a strong ransomware blocker in place,” Guzzi notes.
The library adopted the Trend Vision One platform in May 2021 after seeing its value and responsiveness in action, during a trial period when malware was detected on one of their computers. The modern, AI-powered platform, featuring attack surface risk management (ASRM) and extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities, sprang into action and mitigated the threat. Through the collection and correlation of data across email, endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, and networks, visibility and analysis were enabled that can be difficult to achieve otherwise.
“I would give Trend Vision One a perfect score of 10 out of 10. It is undoubtedly the best product in the market today,” says Guzzi. “I like the customisable dashboards in Trend Vision One. We see potential attacks come in and how they relate to our environment. [The platform] looks at all indicators of compromise to paint a bigger picture of what is going on.”
RESULTS
“Security detection with Trend is a night-and-day improvement from our previous security vendor,” says Guzzi. “With our previous solution, we didn’t have the necessary visibility or response tools available to take action. Trend solutions do a better job of blocking threats, whether they are malicious URLs, drive-bys, or a link someone clicks on by mistake. It stops infections or actions immediately to protect the network. When you buy Trend solutions, you don’t have to sacrifice consolidation for best-in-breed, industry-leading technology.”
The security team has particularly found value in ASRM, which combines prioritised risk assessments and automated mitigation actions across onpremises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
“ASRM has so many benefits—we can see which users and machines are at risk and determine which vulnerabilities are missing. It shows us exactly where we need to focus our efforts, which is amazing considering we’re a small team,” says Guzzi.
Trend also provides users the latest virus definitions and significantly improves visibility. “We are a state government agency that is subject to oversight by the state. Trend Vision One has detected attempted attacks that the state [security operations center] (SOC) has missed, enabling us to swiftly halt these attacks and address the vulnerabilities before they escalate into more widespread problems”, Guzzi adds, noting that Trend solutions have reduced the amount of time library IT staff must dedicate to security. “With Trend Vision One, we have better data. We see what’s happening on each machine, and we get all the information so we can investigate. We’ve had to reimage fewer machines.”
In addition, the security team sees significant benefits from the integration of AI into Trend Vision One. “I would recommend Trend Vision One because of the XDR, AI, and its patching and research for zero days,” says Guzzi.
Implementation also surpassed the South Carolina State Library team’s expectations. While they had planned for it to take weeks, their team had Trend Micro Apex One as a Service up and running in just three days.
“We were expecting to uninstall and reinstall agents on machines manually, but we just had to set it up and move through the console,” says Guzzi, who notes that, in choosing Trend, his team has benefited from a marked improvement in customer support. “Trend customer service is the best I’ve ever had. They usually respond in less than 24 hours. And they always go above and beyond to see that my issue is resolved.”
With Trend Vision One in place, Guzzi is excited to continue expanding the use of the platform and help others in the public sector remain secure.
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