A Study on Increasing Threats and Email Security
Borås City, with 11,000 employees and many vital community functions for 115,000 residents, has the vision of being a sustainable municipality with people and the environment at its center. The municipality strives to meet the future and use technology for the benefit of its citizens and society, while preserving the values and qualities that are cherished. Digital services play a central role in improving the quality of life for residents and strengthening the community. Through expanded broadband and digital solutions in areas such as healthcare, culture, education, business, and public administration, the municipality creates new opportunities to be a vibrant and attractive community.
Municipalities and regions are popular targets for hacker attacks, and Borås City is no exception. In recent years, threats against the municipality have increased dramatically, and attackers have adapted their methods to exploit the digital environment. Today’s attacks are both more frequent and more sophisticated, utilizing a variety of attack vectors. What was once an unusual and sophisticated phishing attack via email is now, unfortunately, a daily occurrence.
The critical challenges faced by Borås City included:
- Increasing number and more sophisticated cyberattacks.
- Lack of effective protection against phishing attacks via email.
- Fragmented data and limited insight into incidents.
- Resource-intensive incident investigations and inadequate response capacity.
- Protecting users in a complex environment while balancing security, access, and privacy challenges.
- Increasing protection against targeted phishing attacks and spam floods.
- Improving the city’s security posture.
- Simplifying and freeing up resources for the city’s IT specialists.
- Creating oversight and insight.
- Enhancing the expertise of the security team.
Together with NetNordic’s cybersecurity advisors, Borås City identified these critical challenges. The work led to a more effective and comprehensive solution to meet the increasing threats and ensure a high level of email security.
“Historically, attacks have been very focused on exploiting infrastructure. The human factor generally makes individuals more vulnerable and harder to protect than technical hardware. We have seen a swift and clear shift in attack methods, which is why we identified our email protection as a critical component and prioritized it to strengthen the organization’s security.”
Borås City has implemented Proofpoint Email Protection
Borås City has implemented Proofpoint Email Protection, a powerful security platform that now secures and protects the city’s email. Along with Proofpoint Email Protection, Borås City has also integrated Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection (TAP), a proactive solution that effectively prevents advanced threats from reaching users’ inboxes, including so-called “Zero-Day” threats and other types of new threats that may be unknown to the city’s IT team.
The email protection ensures that the city’s users are now far more effectively protected against malware and fraud attempts via email. It has also significantly reduced the amount of spam almost overnight. If emails are later classified as harmful or attempt to use evasion tactics, Threat Response Auto Pull (TRAP) allows the city’s IT team to quickly and automatically remove them from users’ mailboxes, even if they have been forwarded to other employees. TAP also identifies the city’s most vulnerable users and reveals targeted ransomware attacks, providing an additional layer of security against the threats the city faces.
Borås City chose Proofpoint because it can:
- Protect the municipality from email attacks such as malware, phishing, and Business Email Compromise (BEC).
- Deliver deep insights and intelligence about cyber threats.
- Simplify and free up resources for the city’s IT specialists.
- Create oversight and insight.
- Enhance the expertise of the security team.
- Automate incident response.