Zscaler Case Studies Fairfax County's Security Strategy Transformation with Zscaler Workload Segmentation
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Fairfax County's Security Strategy Transformation with Zscaler Workload Segmentation

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Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
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Fairfax County, located in Northern Virginia, is the most populous county in the Commonwealth of Virginia with over 1.1 million citizens and more than 12,000 government employees. The county oversees a wide range of services including elections, tax collection, public education, social services, law enforcement, fire and rescue, transportation, and parks and recreation. With the rise in cyberattacks, especially those targeting the government sector, Fairfax County recognized the need to reimagine its security strategy. The county had hundreds of applications in the data center and in Azure that needed to be protected. The county wanted to reduce its network attack surface and decrease the risk of breaches by protecting east-west traffic inside the data center. The next generation firewalls (NGFWs) it was using to protect its data were becoming suboptimal, with hundreds of applications resulting in thousands of policies and creating unnecessary complexity. With a small, centralized IT team, Fairfax County needed to minimize complexity with a zero trust solution that was easy and seamless to deploy, monitor, and manage.
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Fairfax County is located in Northern Virginia and employs more than 12,000 government employees. Founded in 1742, Fairfax County is the most populous county in the Commonwealth of Virginia with more than 1.1 million citizens—approximately 13 percent of Virginia’s population. The county is responsible for overseeing a wide range of services including elections, tax collection, public education, social services, law enforcement, fire and rescue, transportation, and parks and recreation. With a mission to “protect and enrich our quality of life for people, neighborhoods, and diverse communities,” Fairfax County is committed to ensuring the security and safety of its data and systems.
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Fairfax County found the solution in Zscaler Workload Segmentation, which runs seamlessly independently or as part of the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform. The County favored Workload Segmentation because it’s not an evolution of a firewall. Rather, it’s a purpose-built solution engineered to dramatically simplify microsegmentation by using the identity of software and machines and by automating the entire policy lifecycle with machine learning. Additionally, Workload Segmentation protects applications in both Azure public cloud and on-premises physical servers, increases visibility into application communications, deploys easily, and simplifies creation of segments and policies. The county conducted a comprehensive market evaluation and decided to expand its Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform. The solution's superior machine learning capabilities helped the county discover all the processes running on their systems, and when the whole segment was deployed, it identified communication between systems within, coming into, and going out of the segment.
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The implementation of Zscaler Workload Segmentation has brought about significant operational benefits for Fairfax County. The solution's machine learning capabilities have simplified policy creation, monitoring, and management, reducing the burden on the county's lean IT staff and allowing them to focus on business-critical needs. The solution has also eliminated tedious troubleshooting tasks, further enhancing the efficiency of the IT team. Moreover, the solution has increased visibility into application communications, providing the county with valuable insights into its systems. The county is now in the final stages of setting up host segments and is looking forward to sunsetting its legacy firewalls, which have caused multiple problems and required a lot of time to troubleshoot.
Protected all 2,000 production systems on premises and in the cloud
Simplified policy creation, monitoring, and enforcement
Eliminated tedious troubleshooting tasks enabling IT to focus on business-critical needs
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