Publish date: 25.10.22

Rutland County Council is located in the East Midlands, serving 40,000 residents, and employing 500 members of staff. As a government-led organisation, with a small in-house IT team, Rutland County Council are constantly evaluating their security posture and the gaps that may appear as threats become more sophisticated and complex to defend against.

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Maximising Existing Investments

After a thorough discovery session to uncover Rutland’s existing challenges, Xeretec presented Tessian to Rutland as the best fit solution for their business. After a demonstration of the product, the decision was made to deploy, “implementation was extremely professional and the solution was configured perfectly to maximise its total benefit” says Andy Nix.

Rutland County Council previously educated their users with an off the shelf, third-party phishing simulation software. This was replaced by Tessian Defender, a more sophisticated solution where staff are now warned of the potential threat in real-time. These contextual banners clearly explain why the threat was flagged and advice on what action to take. The solution was therefore able to take on the dual role of educating staff whilst providing protection at the same time. Rutland also acknowledged their existing third party secure email gateway (SEG) was unable to provide sufficient protection against more sophisticated threats which were getting through. By deploying the additional layer of protection with Tessian Defender, Rutland’s existing SEG was able to be refined. This resulted in improved performance and ROI, whilst increasing Rutland’s overall security posture.

The Drivers for Change

  • An increase in observed ransomware attacks in the public sector, particularly via email targeting other councils.
  • IT and service delivery were hugely stretched, creating a need for a tool that isn’t solely reliant on IT for management and
    remediation.
  • Staff experiencing an increase in targeted impersonation attacks particularly within the finance team.
  • With state-organised attacks becoming more prevalent, the NCSC have provided guidance to government led industries such as councils on how they should increase their security posture.

The Solution: Tessian Defender with M365 Integration

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“I believe we now have the best-in-class email security solution for educating staff and have added a valuable layer of protection to bolster our existing investments. Deploying Tessian Defender has been a total win for Rutland. There is less work to do for us in IT and our staff now feel empowered to act as an additional layer of defence”

– Andy Nix, Head of IT, Rutland County Council