Proofpoint email solutions empower and engage city employees in the fight against cyber threats

The City

Known as the Gateway to the Rockies , Aurora , Colorado , boasts spectacular views of the Rocky Mountains . Aurora is the third-largest city in Colorado with more than 381,000 residents . When Tim McCain was hired as the City ' s CISO , he and his team found themselves besieged by phishing attacks . Before they could focus on implementing risk-based governance and building security operations , they had to reclaim hours of time being spent on email attacks and cleanup .

The Challenge

The existing infrastructure lacked an email gateway . The City had added Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection to its Office 365 deployment , but attacks still occurred regularly , and internally generated spam was still overwhelming . Worse , the team had no visibility and no incident data for improving defenses . For each incident , investigation through the vendor portal could take several days and still not deliver meaningful answers .

“ Low security efficacy and visibility are bad for any organization ,” said McCain . “ But the real problem is how attacks affected our people . We needed to defend City employees and services for the community , as well as empower and energize our team .”