By anyone’s standards, it’s a big job. Yet, like most local government organizations, the city doesn’t have a fat budget or an endless pool of resources to devote to security.

That’s why the city has been a Nomic Networks customer, and Scott has been an Outpost advocate, for the past ten years.

“I first saw Sentinel [now Nomic Networks] at a Texas Association of Governments IT Managers Conference a decade ago, when security threats weren’t as nefarious as they are today,” Smith said.  “It was a solid solution, and they made the market entry extremely easy for smaller organizations—no annual contract, an affordable monthly price, and you could try out the product for 30 days and if you didn’t like it, you could send it back. We’ve been customers ever since.”

According to Smith, one of the big benefits of Nomic is that it’s managed and monitored.

“It is a wonderful fit for cities or businesses that don’t have the resources to manage a super-complex Intrusion Prevention System that requires a lot of care and feeding,” Smith said. “They do all of the security updates for you.  You literally can set it and forget it.”

The Extra Layer of Security that Makes a Big Impact

Although the City of Bryan has significantly upgraded its network security over the years, as firewalls and other access control technologies have evolved, Nomic Networks is still a critical component to its overall security strategy.

“Our firewall now comes with a license fee that turns it into an IPS, as well. While that’s a benefit, one of the things I like about [Outpost] is that it’s not our firewall provider. It’s another vendor, another layer of defense to catch what another vendor may not catch,” Smith said. “If you have the same data set across your infrastructure, you only have one set of eyes, and one set of threat intelligence. It doesn’t make sense to put all of your eggs in one vendor basket if you really want to keep your network safe.”

The City of Bryan uses two Outpost devices—one to protect the city network and the other for the utility company network.

“We use our [Outposts] just where I like them, as our first line of defense. The device sits just behind the router, so it’s the first thing that sees Internet traffic,” Smith explained. “Behind that, we have another IPS/firewall, and then we go on back through concentric circles, if you will, or layers of defensive depth, as you get closer to our core information and infrastructure. So, [the Outpost] gets all of the nasty stuff first.”

According to Smith, one of the most impressive Outpost features is the company’s proprietary “network cloaking,” which makes the city’s public IP invisible to known threats.

“If they’re trying to do some sort of reconnaissance, [the Outpost] picks up on that, and blocks them immediately. It’s not a timeout; the device just doesn’t respond to the request, as if nothing was there. So, whomever is doing the scanning of the IP address is totally blocked from communicating with our network,” Smith said. “I can’t say that I know what the secret sauce is that makes network cloaking work, but, what I know is that it does work. “

In addition to blocking malicious traffic coming into the network, Outpost also looks at the traffic going out.

“If it spots information beaconing out to a malware server, [Outpost] takes control, blocks that communication from going out, and sends us an alert,” Smith said. “Then, we can go find that internal machine and run a scan on it, and if it’s been compromised, wipe it, or take whatever action that needs to happen.”

Having an Outpost on the network edge also enhances firewall performance.

“[The Outpost] is cleaning off thousands of events that the firewall now doesn’t have to deal with,” Smith said. “If there’s a vulnerability in the firewall or an open port, it mitigates that scenario. So, only the relevant traffic flows through, which is definitely a benefit.”

Automatic Updates. 24/7 Support.

Unlike most security solutions, the Outpost makes intrusion detection and prevention easy.

“Once they send you the box, you can set up the device in 30 minutes and it will start defending your network right then,” Smith said. “You can put in your own white and black lists, if you want, but, the [Nomic Networks] security team is going to keep the threat list in the device updated, based on the intelligence they get from the Outpost network and other sources. There’s just not a lot of configuration that needs to be done by the end user. And, I think that fits really well with the needs of small- and medium-sized businesses and government agencies.”

How does Smith know the Outposts are working? All he has to do is look at the numbers. In August 2018 alone, the two devices detected more than 200,000 events, with more than 900 of those high-severity events. From January through August of 2018, the two Outpost devices detected and shut down 2.1 million events.

Equally impressive is the quality of the detection. All of this happened with few, if any, false positives.

“Very rarely does [the Outpost] block legitimate business-related traffic. I can’t even remember the last time that happened,” Smith said. “If that does happen, we just go in and move that vendor ID to the white list. It doesn’t come up often, and when it does, it’s easy to resolve.”

The Right Threat Protection Today—and in the Future

No question, Smith has seen a lot of changes over the years that impact security, from the rise of the Internet of Things and smart homes to the now- ubiquitous cloud.

“The threat landscape is so broad now with so many services in the cloud,” he said. “There are more threats, and new threats every year—so much that it’s impossible to defend against it all. You have to risk base it. You can’t just work with one company, or one solution—no matter how good—and think you are protected.”

That’s why Smith continues to be a fan: it’s effective, it’s affordable and it delivers on its promise.

“The more I’m in the security business, the more hesitant I am to say ‘never.’ But, as far as I know, we’ve never had a breach since we’ve had [the Outposts],” he said. “It consistently does a good job for us. Even when we didn’t have an IPS firewall behind it, we were confident in its performance. It’s affordable for smaller organizations, easy to use and it works.”

That’s a value proposition pretty hard to ignore.