To help safeguard Hillsborough County’s 1.5 million residents, the Sheriff’s Office has partnered with Armis, a cybersecurity company based in Palo Alto, Calif., to increase its visibility of unmanaged assets, network traffic and device communication.
Before partnering with Armis, Sheriff's Office CIO Todd Ryan said he was “100 percent” confident about the managed devices on the county’s network. However, device visibility remained a concern, prompting Ryan and his team to connect with Armis.
“While we had complete confidence in what we could control, we were blind to what we did not know,” Ryan said in a case study.
For example, one of the primary concerns was not knowing where a user might have unplugged their agency-issued computer or connected to the network with an unmanaged device from home.
Now, the Sheriff’s Office uses a centralized Armis dashboard to collect data on device activity and detect behavioral anomalies or traffic patterns that could indicate a potential threat or vulnerabilities.
“We are now trying to sort out all the information Armis provides and working on how to mitigate issues,” Ryan said. “It’s like being led blindfolded into a big room and having the blindfold yanked off you. It takes a while to adjust your eyes and take everything in.”
Not long after using the dashboard, the Sheriff’s Office found quite a significant amount of unmanaged assets and devices — “at least five times what we guessed was on the network,” Ryan said.
Other uses of the technology include mapping network traffic between applications and devices and monitoring communication between devices.
More information about the county’s partnership with Armis can be found online.
Hillsborough County Partners With Armis to Safeguard Citizen Data
In a recent case study, Todd Ryan, chief information officer for the county’s sheriff’s office, shared how they have implemented a centralized dashboard to track device behavior and uncover potential threats.
