Government Agency Protects Citizens’ PII and Receives Highest Rankings for Information Security with Netwrix Auditor

Washington County, Ark., uses Netwrix Auditor to control user activity across its IT environment and ensure continuous compliance with state guidelines for protecting PII

Irvine, CA, January 26, 2017

Netwrix Corporation, the first vendor to introduce a visibility and governance platform for hybrid cloud security, today announced that the Information Systems Department of Washington County, Ark., chose Netwrix Auditor to gain full control over activity in its IT environment, minimize the risk of insider misuse, and secure data entrusted to the county by citizens and employees.

The Administration of Washington County handles a variety of sensitive data, from vendor contracts to personally identifiable information (PII) of citizens and employees. The Administration’s information systems (IS) department needed to ensure data security and comply with regulatory standards. Failure to comply could lead to fines and loss of citizens’ trust.

To address the challenge, the IS department evaluated a number of solutions and opted for Netwrix Auditor because it was easy to use, reasonably priced, cost-effective and didn’t require any consulting services. With Netwrix Auditor, the IS department has achieved the following results:

  • Validation of security policies. The IT team reviews Netwrix Auditor reports on user activity across the IT environment on a daily basis, paying special attention to permissions changes and file modifications, deletions and moves. Quick detection and investigation of suspicious events and unwanted changes ensures that all security policies are carefully followed.
  • Continuous compliance and efficient audits. The IS team must deal with a number of regulatory standards, including HIPAA, and authorities such as the Arkansas Legislative Joint Auditing Committee. During annual audits, the team can now address many requests from auditors at the time of asking, which make audits efficient, quick and less stressful. The team can also run historical queries and prove that required security policies were in place at all times.

"Since the Netwrix Auditor deployment, Washington County has been recognized as the most progressive county in the state of Arkansas for information security. It has helped us on a number of occasions to proactively deal with potential security incidents, such as a sub-contractor’s violation of permissions, and minimize user impact on our security. We also really enjoyed the support provided by Netwrix; we quickly got to the meat of all opportunities offered by the software and achieved great results," said John Adams, IT Director at Washington County Information Systems Department.

"Security of data starts with complete visibility into what is actually happening, who has access to what, who modifies and deletes sensitive files, and so on," said Michael Fimin, CEO and co-founder of Netwrix. "Government agencies typically struggle with meeting the requirements of numerous standards for data protection, while having small IT teams that have to wear multiple hats. Complete visibility into the IT environment and user behavior analysis bring control and address three main issues for such institutions: data security, compliance and operational efficiency of small teams."

Netwrix Auditor is a visibility and governance platform that enables control over changes, configurations and access in hybrid cloud IT environments to protect data regardless of its location. The platform provides security analytics to detect anomalies in user behavior and investigate threat patterns before a data breach occurs.

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

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

Social networks:

Netwrix blog
Twitter
LinkedIn
Google+
YouTube
Spiceworks
Facebook

Media contact:

Erin Jones
Avista PR for Netwrix
Phone: 704.664.2170

Contact us:

Your questions and feedback are always welcome. Please dial our toll-free number, 888-638-9749, or enter your question details here and we will reply as soon as possible.