Rancho Mission Viejo Saves 25 Hours Weekly on Ensuring Accountability of its Remote Workforce and Trusted Team of Consultants
Netwrix Auditor has been one of the most cost-efficient security solutions we’ve ever invested in. It’s giving me visibility into insider threats, ransomware and brute-force attacks — all in one product suite, so I don’t have to invest in multiple solutions. Netwrix has very consistent upgrade cycle and is always on the forefront of the newest compliance initiatives and emerging threats to defend our security needs.
John Chow, CIO,
Rancho Mission Viejo
- The CIO at Rancho Mission Viejo drives strategic initiatives, planning and IT budgeting, while day-to-day IT processes are outsourced to a managed services provider (MSP) and other third-party application vendors. The CIO needed enhanced visibility to automate change auditing across the IT environment to make outsourced teams accountable for their actions and to be able to detect rogue activity by any network user.
- Rancho Mission Viejo stores large amount of sensitive financial data, such as business plans, budgeting for residential corporate development, separate ERP systems for Family Office and Development operations. The CIO needed to gain visibility into activity around this data, so he can quickly spot suspicious user actions and respond before they lead to a breach.
With Netwrix Auditor, we slashed the time for change auditing and activity monitoring by 90%, compared to what we did manually with our previous solution. At the moment, the software saves us at least 4-5 hours a day.
John Chow, CIO,
Rancho Mission Viejo
John Chow, CIO at Rancho Mission Viejo, chose Netwrix Auditor because it provides flexible reporting and alerting capabilities for its core IT systems. He especially liked that he could fine-tune the alerts to his organization’s needs and security policies. John’s management also valued that Netwrix generates reports on users working after hours and details exactly what they were doing. With the solution, Rancho Mission Viejo gained the following benefits:
- Network activity monitoring of remote users and third-party vendors/consultants. With Netwrix, John can review user activity reports and receive real-time alerts of activity across the IT environment and make sure that activity is authorized. It even alerts him to critical actions, such as changes to group membership, privileges and Active Directory accounts. This functionality was particularly useful when Rancho Mission Viejo was in the process of switching to a new vendor and wanted to make sure that the outgoing vendor was not making any unauthorized changes.
- Visibility into activity around sensitive data. Netwrix solutions give John deep insight into insider threats and spot actions that might affect data security much faster. In particular, he can now detect users working outside business hours and monitor the manipulation of sensitive files and folders, including who is accessing which files and what they are doing with them, so he can take action promptly to prevent security incidents.
- Early detection of malware and brute-force attacks. John uses Netwrix to promptly detect attacks (through real-time alerts), including ransomware and brute-force attacks. The software helps him spot any deviations from his known good baseline, such as excessive failed logins, mass changes to files and folders (both failed and successful), and suspicious file extensions that could be malware, viruses or other dangerous executables stored on public shares. In those cases, he can investigate quickly and thwart the attack before it inflicts any damage.
- Continuous support and communication with the vendor. John appreciates not just the product functionality, but his great experience with Netwrix overall, which includes seamless onboarding, responsive and fast technical support, educational sessions about new features, and webinars on the most pressing cybersecurity threats and emerging compliance standards. This multifaceted support further increases the ROI of Netwrix software for Rancho Mission Viejo.
- Improved accountability of remote users and third-party vendors
- Enforced security of financial data
- Ensured prompt detection of cyberattacks
- Maximized ROI for the security investment
Rancho Mission Viejo is an active 23,000-acre ranch and farm, habitat reserve, and community in unincorporated areas of South Orange County, CA, U.S. Begun as a series of land grants to John Forster in 1845, Rancho Mission Viejo now includes a nearly 17,000-acre (6,900 ha) nature reserve and multiple residential communities slated to open in phases between 2010 and 2030.