Electric Cooperative Saves 50 Hours Every Week on Security Monitoring

Netwrix Auditor enables Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative to improve the security of its critical IT infrastructure

Irvine, CA, July 25, 2017

Netwrix Corporation, provider of a visibility platform for user behavior analysis and risk mitigation in hybrid environments, announced today that Netwrix Auditor empowers Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative to minimize insider threats and improve SQL database security.

Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative (GVEC) is one of the largest cooperatives in Texas, U.S., serving over 85,000 consumers. It specializes in delivering electricity, internet services, energy-efficient appliances, AC/heating sales and service, and solar options. As an energy supplier, GVEC has to ensure the security of its critical IT infrastructure. The IT team’s main concern was to gain visibility into the activity of the 350+ network users in order to protect both the day-to-day operations of the electrical grid and sensitive customer data.

Netwrix Auditor met all the requirements of GVEC’s IT team, including ease of deployment and use, clear reports, and cost-effectiveness. With the solution, GVEC gained the following benefits:

  • Centralized control over critical systems. Because Netwrix Auditor is a unified platform that consolidates user activity and configuration information across all critical systems, the IT team now needs only 10 minutes a day to keep tabs on critical changes that could otherwise lead to outages or data breaches.
  • Visibility into user accounts. The team used the software to check the current state of user accounts in Active Directory against their previous states and tie up security loose ends. In particular, they detected and removed over 50 inactive accounts that otherwise could have been maliciously used by hackers, and also pruned excessive permissions granted to employees.
  • Improved SQL database security. Netwrix Auditor consolidates activity across all SQL servers and helps ensure the safety of vital data, such as sensitive customer information and the electric meters that GVEC needs to bill its members and customers. Once the software helped the IT team detect unauthorized changes made to the data and quickly identify the culprit: an employee who gained DBA rights by mistake.

"Since we are an electrical entity, our environment is a target, and we have to keep our security at the highest level. With visibility into what is going on, you can more easily spot malicious activity, as well as clean up the IT department’s internal activity. Shortly after we got Netwrix Auditor, we identified some security gaps and tightened up our procedures and policies. It also helped us create a more efficient IT environment, saving us over 50 hours a week," said Matt Huffman, System Analyst at Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative.

"Modern society has a low tolerance for electrical grid failures, since electricity is one of the key resources vital for both individuals and businesses. Therefore, energy suppliers need to ensure the security of the critical IT infrastructures that play a central role in electricity distribution. Complete visibility into the environment enables IT departments to control user activity, thus protecting the day-to-day operations of grids," said Michael Fimin, CEO and Co-Founder of Netwrix.

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

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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