City of Columbia
City of Columbia Uses the Fortinet Security Fabric to Protect Critical Public Services and Comply with Utility Industry Standards
Overview
The City of Columbia, Missouri, is responsible for running public services and supporting its citizens. The administration must ensure that its cybersecurity controls comply with a wide range of guidelines and regulations relating to the city’s utilities services, and that they can adequately protect citizens’ data. Managing and securing access to its network is also a priority, as it works with a large number of vendors.
The City of Columbia has partnered with Fortinet for over a decade. It uses FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) in high-availability pairs to provide edge security across a citywide dark fiber network as well as for network segmentation. The city benefits from further security controls through a FortiWeb web application firewall. Meanwhile, the city uses the FortiClient Endpoint Management Server (EMS) for the robust protection and streamlined management of its endpoints and FortiAnalyzer for log analytics and reporting. With Fortinet, the city benefits from a highly automated infrastructure that achieves compliance and delivers a more proactive security posture.
“There is nothing worse than having a one-off solution that you have to shoehorn into your system to make it work. Fortinet products integrate seamlessly with other Fortinet devices and with security tools from other vendors. This is a clear differentiator for Fortinet—it has only been concerned about one thing: creating a solution that meets our needs and is easy to use.”
– John Maier, Senior Network Engineer, City of Columbia
Business Impact
Ability to comply with North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) electricity industry standards
Enhanced protection of residents’ data
Increased resiliency of public services
Increased uptime of endpoints and improved productivity
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