The municipality
Found on the southwestern shore of Lac Saint-Jean in Quebec, the City of Roberval has 11,520 residents that rely on city services every day. Cybersecurity has been a top concern for city staff, with personnel looking for ways to take a more active approach to securing critical infrastructure and data.
In 2020, IT manager Jean-Philippe Martel was given a mandate to seriously strengthen the city’s protections for digital assets and information.
The challenge
Cyberattacks on every industry are rising at an exponential rate—and municipalities are no exception. Public infrastructure and data are appealing targets to attackers, in large part due to the limited resources and legacy IT systems municipalities often work with.
These older devices and technologies may be difficult to update and manage, and the staff who use them may not understand current cybersecurity best practices.
What’s more, automated tools have enabled hackers to target more users and devices than ever before with a fraction of the effort once needed. These tools make it that much easier to spot vulnerabilities in IT systems that could give attackers a foothold to access a wider network. These attacks can happen at any time of day; hackers don’t respect office hours, after all.
Martel and city staff understood that owning a complete cybersecurity solution is no longer an option. Building a complex tech stack and hiring staff to operate it is not a cost-effective approach for most businesses, let alone municipalities.
The City of Roberval required a cybersecurity solution that would allow them to address these challenges and secure vital digital assets and data.
The solution
The City of Roberval approached PG Solutions, a leading information technology company with a focus on delivering smart solutions for municipalities and government agencies, for a demonstration of their cybersecurity solution. It soon became clear that PG Solutions was the right choice for Roberval.
PG Solutions’ partnership with Field Effect, a global cybersecurity company, gave them access to a sophisticated security solution—Field Effect MDR. With Field Effect MDR, PG Solutions was able to deliver a truly end-to-end managed detection and response service, backed by leading human intelligence.
The results
The order for Field Effect MDR was placed over the holiday season in December 2020. By the time employees returned from their holidays in January 2021, Field Effect MDR was already fully operational.
Within a week, Martel and the IT team had confidently secured the city’s critical IT infrastructure. The team was pleasantly surprised by how fast and easy implementation was. Furthermore, they were impressed by wealth of benefits Field Effect MDR had to offer. The solution’s proactive approach to vulnerability and threat notifications in the form of AROs alerted the City of Roberval to potential security gaps and additional concerns they hadn’t considered, arming them with the context needed to address them with confidence.
In addition, Martel used the built-in Suspicious Email Analysis Service (SEAS) to conduct employee training sessions, improving security awareness and giving staff the knowledge needed to spot and flag potential phishing attempts.
Finally, Field Effect MDR has allowed the city to confidently address data protection requirements under Quebec’s Law 25, well ahead of the September 2022 compliance deadline. Field Effect MDR is carrying out a true behavioral analysis of cyberattacks, giving city IT staff true peace of mind and a greater understanding of how to best address to the security risks facing their community.
