Georgia’s Hall County

Fighting off a cyberattack requires being fully equipped. After seeing ransomware attacks hit other counties, Hall County officials vowed to protect their environment with comprehensive, integrated cybersecurity—leading them to Trend Micro’s enterprise cybersecurity platform.

Hall County’s offices are spread across a broad geographical area, making their operations diverse and complex. The county has an onsite data center, an offsite redundant data center, shared fiber locations, and it uses the cloud to maintain data backups.

In addition to location-related challenges, the county must ensure that employees practice proper IT security hygiene on their devices, including mobile devices.

“I wanted a robust solution for endpoint and network security. I also wanted to know if something happened, why it happened. I want to be proactive versus reactive. You can never be too prepared,” says André Castleberry, Cyber Security Administrator, Hall County, Georgia.

Hall County evaluated several IT security vendors before choosing Trend Micro.

“Once I saw a demo, I realized how much Trend Micro could offer to us and I was impressed with the depth of their solutions,” says Castleberry.

The fact that the county could consolidate their solution needs with one vendor was a major selling point and provided confidence that different components would work together seamlessly.

“I’d have just one place to look for answers. With a small IT team, that is huge,” says Castleberry.

Ease of use, product quality, and support were additional key differentiators that led to the county’s decision to go with Trend Micro.

“With Trend Micro, ‘premium support’ is an understatement. I consistently get calls and emails from the team asking if I need help or to alert me about something. When I have a question, the Trend Micro team will put together a call in five minutes to help me or walk me through something,” says Castleberry.

Hall County first conducted a proof-of-concept (POC) project using Trend Micro™ TippingPoint™. Castleberry then added Trend Micro™ Deep Discovery™ Inspector, enabling the county to conduct deeper analysis. Most recently, the county added Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Workload Security, Trend Micro Vision One™, and Trend Micro Apex One™ as a Service. Castleberry says Trend Micro Vision One threat investigation capability is an important component of that solution.

“It’s great to be able to drill down into endpoints to see what is going on. When I give reports to our administration, I can get the information I need to answer their probing questions,” says Castleberry.

Trend Micro Apex One also alerts Castleberry to the most dangerous endpoints in the network and matches them to end users.

“Some departments are notorious for downloading or uploading things we don’t authorize. I can put together a report to show which groups are not adhering to our cybersecurity policies and ensure they receive additional training,” says Castleberry.

Finally, Premium Support from Trend Micro Service One™ Complete acts as an extension of Castleberry’s small security team, providing on-call help from global security experts whenever and wherever they need it.

With Trend Micro Service One Complete, the county can offload its security challenges, optimize its ROI with expert advice on industry-leading Trend Micro solutions, and enjoy real-time, proactive advice.

“It’s not like a client-vendor relationship. It is like we are all on the same team. It has been a good relationship from day one,” says Castleberry.

"Trend Micro Vision One is my control panel and the first thing I look at when I start in the morning. It tells me what I need to focus on."

André Castleberry
Cyber Security Administrator
Hall County, Georgia

“By filtering out malicious and unwanted traffic, TippingPoint decreased network traffic in Hall County by 17% in one month. Trend Micro Apex One reduced the county’s IT trouble desk tickets related to malware and viruses by 35%. When you see what Trend Micro Apex One and TippingPoint block, it gives me the confidence I need to ensure our environment is safe and secure,” says Castleberry.

Finally, Trend Micro Vision One, which delivers powerful extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities, provides Castleberry with a dashboard so he can view everything at once.

“Trend Micro Vision One is my control panel and the first thing I look at when I start in the morning. It tells me what I need to focus on, and that translates to better time management. Without Trend Micro, there would not be enough hours in the week to get everything done,” says Castleberry.

For an extra layer of visibility, Trend Micro™ Managed XDR offers the county additional resources.

“Trend Micro’s managed services have empowered our small team to manage risk and compliance at scale. Having threat experts support day-to-day detection and response for our security platform allows our employees to focus resources on serving our constituents,” says Castleberry.

The county plans to migrate to Microsoft Office 365, which will allow it to use Workload Security to its full capacity. Castleberry says that adopting Trend Micro solutions is helping to speed up that transition.

“As long as I’m here, we will be doing business with Trend Micro,” says Castleberry.

“The Trend Micro security platform has made me more efficient to get things done.”