The state of Arizona has chosen Tanium, the Kirkland, Wash.-based converged endpoint management (XEM) platform to protect citizens’ sensitive and confidential data across its 100+ agencies, 15 counties, 91 cities, 230 K12 districts and 22 tribal nations.
The Arizona Department of Homeland Security provides strategic direction and access to federal homeland security resources. It also manages the statewide cyber readiness grant program to further enable the prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery from terrorist attacks and other critical hazards that affect the safety and economic security of Arizona. Tanium was selected to provide cybersecurity and support compliance in a multiframework environment.
“In cybersecurity, we’re expected to hold off the Russian military, as well as the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians, you name it,” said Tim Roemer, CISO for the state of Arizona’s and director of the Arizona Department of Homeland Security, in a statement. “After all, cybersecurity is homeland security, and I can’t protect 7.5 million Arizonan’s data from an attacker I don’t know about. With a whole-of-state approach supported by Tanium and AWS, we’re now sharing information in real time. I’m stronger as a CISO because I know what other people are seeing, and locals are better protecting themselves from attacks we’re seeing at the state level.”
State-wide Cybersecurity
The whole-of-state approach is rooted in collaboration. It provides coordination and standardization of governance, implementation and validation. In just the first five months of last year, 71 million Americans were affected by ransomware attacks on state, local, and tribal entities, prompting governments to turn to endpoint management solutions.
“Arizona prioritizes a 21st-century economy and workforce,” said Megan Fitzgerald, public safety and cybersecurity advisor to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, in a statement. “State-wide cybersecurity is key to achieving our goals. Best practices such as this are critical to enable effective commerce and innovation, while protecting Arizona families and finances from getting into the wrong hands. We are proud to see Arizona lead the nation in providing security services to all levels of government.”
The situation in Arizona is similar to what exists in other state and local governments. States and municipalities around the country face a critical need to replace their outdated point tools with easily scalable platform solutions.
“Addressing the basics of cybersecurity and fulfilling the standardized cybersecurity frameworks is difficult for any organization, but for government organizations, and specifically smaller governments organizations like rural communities and K-12 districts, this challenge is exponentially more difficult,” said Ryan Murray, Arizona’s deputy CISO and deputy director of the Arizona Department of Homeland Security, in statement. “We’re working hard to address the cybersecurity poverty line between the have/have nots in the public sector. Utilizing resources at the state level to bring security to the whole-of-state allows the organizations below the poverty line to quickly close gaps and focus their fiscal and human resources on developing a more holistic cyber strategy.”
Tanium Brings IT, Compliance, Security and Risk Teams Together
The AZDOHS pioneering whole-of-state approach will help other states evaluate, select, procure and execute similar initiatives by providing a proven model for proactive cybersecurity protection and proven governance structure. In fact, Arizona was able to patch more than 326,000 vulnerabilities in fewer than 72 hours with Tanium—more than it had been able to patch in the previous six months.
“Tanium Cloud partner AWS streamlined the procurement process through AWS Marketplace, making it faster, more efficient, and more cost effective for Arizona,” said Rob Jenks, senior vice president of corporate strategy at Tanium. “Buying Tanium in the AWS Marketplace allows customers to make purchases quickly and seamlessly by leveraging their existing agreements and processes with AWS, resulting in a great buying experience to go along with the fast and easy experience of deploying and using Tanium Cloud on AWS.”
Tanium brings IT, Compliance, Security, and Risk teams together with a single trusted source of truth to support statewide IT decision-making. Numerous government organizations already trust Tanium XEM to reduce their attack surface and provide unrivaled access to real-time asset visibility and the ability to patch at scale—including devices that are on or off network or VPN. XEM’s single pane of glass identifies and prioritizes vulnerabilities with vigilant, real-time visibility to remediate potential threats almost immediately.
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