MidCoast Council deploys cybersecurity future-fit architecture

MidCoast Council in New South Wales has deployed Check Point Infinity cybersecurity architecture, built to prevent sophisticated fifth generation attacks across networks, cloud deployments, endpoints, and mobile and IoT devices.

The platform provides the council with a comprehensive security solution stack across its data centres, endpoints and remote locations and will support the organisation to simplify its complex infrastructure.

The MidCoast Council IT network connects 80 sites, including district offices, citizen services centres and critical infrastructure plants, primarily using a private microwave radio network, with additional sites connected via 4G or VPN. Services are delivered from a primary data centre with a secondary data centre providing backup and disaster recovery capabilities. With more than 1100 users including external contractors, the IT team also supports nine communications towers, around 30 vCenter Hosts, 250 virtual machines, 200 desktop PCs, 1000 mobile devices and 600 Windows laptops.

“We needed a holistic, consistent security solution and selected Check Point partner S5 Technology Group to help us achieve our goals of achieving a single-pane-of-glass management and flexibility to support immediate and future deployments without disruption,” said Mike Nelson, Coordinator IT Infrastructure for MidCoast Council.

The council deployed Check Point Quantum Security Gateways for network edge security in the main office and to secure segmented traffic at local sites, automatically benefiting from Check Point ThreatCloud AI, which keeps customers’ networks fully informed about new evasive threats and delivers immediate cybersecurity updates to protect the council’s digital assets. Primary data centre security was also upgraded using Check Point Quantum Lightspeed for up to 3 Tbps throughput with ultra-low latency. Quantum Lightspeed provides firewall services for the organisation’s internal corporate networks.

“The single most effective solution for us so far has been the Quantum Security Gateways,” said Aaron Beard, Senior Network Administrator for MidCoast Council.

“We’ve relied extensively on several key features. Identity awareness capabilities give us granular visibility of users, groups and machines to support critical water quality and wastewater management operations. Remote access VPN features were vital during the pandemic, and intrusion prevention system (IPS) significantly boosted protection of networks and servers.

“In addition, Check Point has helped the council evolve its level of security maturity as defined by the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential Eight security framework,” Beard said.

“Infinity increased our security performance — in throughput and protection — in ways that other vendors couldn’t.”

Check Point Harmony Endpoint protects the organisation’s PCs and laptops, preventing the most imminent threats to endpoints across the environment. MidCoast Council also chose Check Point Horizon Managed Prevention & Response (MDR) for 24/7/365 security infrastructure monitoring and threat intelligence by Check Point elite experts, enabling the council to prevent, monitor, detect, investigate and remediate attacks with a single solution.

“Check Point Infinity allows us to evolve our security without having to know all of our requirements ahead of time,” Nelson said.

“We have immediately secured our critical infrastructure with the most advanced security humanly possible. At the same time, we can add and adapt our solutions to meet the needs we know are coming later.”

Holistic and consistent

Consolidated management and logging make it easy for the MidCoast Council IT team to see the entire infrastructure. As a collaborative environment, all Check Point Infinity solutions integrate seamlessly, allowing the team to work together.

“Infinity gives us complete flexibility,” Nelson said. “Going forward, we can easily adapt protection as we need it. For example, we’re migrating email to Microsoft 365 in the cloud. We’ll be able to extend Zero Trust to new areas of our network. Future cloud deployments will be protected. Check Point provides us with the comprehensive, consolidated, collaborative approach needed to secure whatever comes next.”

Council provides administration for local government entities, critical infrastructure and citizen services serving around 95,000 residents and spanning 10,000 square kilometres, with Taree and Forster–Tuncurry being its two major population centres.

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