The City of Keizer is located in Marion County, Oregon, United States. Its administration is composed of different divisions such as the police department, public works, community development, etc. The provision of such essential services means the city handles very sensitive data, for which they need to ensure is protected and access secured.
The Challenge
Deploy 2FA solution following a ransomware attack
The City of Keizer was recently victim to a ransomware attack. To help shield the city from future attacks, a stronger security strategy was adopted. Top of the list was an extra layer of protection with two-factor authentication (2FA).
For the Police Department, regulations and mandates already required the use of two factors to protect information. To comply, the Department had implemented Duo 2FA, but the solution wasn’t thought to be very easy to set up or user friendly. Therefore a new solution was sought that could be easily deployed across all user and administrative accounts, from all departments.
The Solution
2FA for Active Directory that is affordable, capable and user-friendly
Bill Hopkins, IT Manager at the City of Keizer researched various 2FA solutions. After looking at online demos, checking functionalities and comparing cost he quickly realized UserLock was perfect for his needs.
It is affordable, integrates easily with Active Directory, is simple to install and maintain. It’s basically an IT Manager’s dream.
Bill Hopkins
Network Administrator
According to Bill, the deployment and implementation were flawless. He received zero complaints from end-users. To meet different end-users needs, he created three groups in UserLock to customize the circumstances for a second factor.
- Administrators: 2FA is being asked at every logon
- General users: 2FA is being asked once a day (first logon of the day)
- Patrol: they use both desktop and portable laptops so 2FA is being asked once a day per machine).
The City of Keizer appreciates the fact that UserLock can be configured to support various types of authenticators such as hardware security keys, mobile-based authentication and programmable tokens.
Because the police department patrol group is always on the move, they needed fast and convenient strong authentication. They chose the YubiKey from Yubico, a leader in authentication security. The YubiKey is a hardware security key that supports multiple authentication protocols and offers strong authentication at a single touch, protecting against phishing attacks and account takeovers. UserLock and the YubiKey together enhance security and maximize productivity and convenience for users.
Other users can choose between their smartphone and a programmable token called Token2.
User onboarding was super easy, most users did it themselves.
Bill Hopkins
Network Administrator
In addition to 2FA, Bill really enjoys UserLock’s real time monitoring of all users’ sessions. It gives him visibility on every logon, logoff or lock event to be able to review and respond to any suspicious activity. An alert was initiated to notify Bill for when every admin account logs in to keep track of all their movements.
The Benefits
Effective protection for all Active Directory user accounts
UserLock has allowed the City of Keizer to get one single 2FA solution for all of their users. Its ease of use has saved the IT Department a lot of time onboarding and managing 2FA.
The real-time visibility allows them to see who’s connected, when and from where and to react immediately in case of unusual events.
If you were to ask me what I would recommend to other IT pro's, I would simply say, use UserLock! It’s impossible to find a better product with this price and these features. The support and customer service were really helpful. We couldn’t ask for anything better.
Bill Hopkins
Network Administrator