Standardizing on McAfee for Complete Endpoint Protection Saves the State of New York Millions of Dollars While Increasing Security

As with many state governments these days, the State of New York has been experiencing a budget shortfall and needed to find ways to cut costs while still ensuring the utmost protection of their critical assets. With 19 million New York citizens to support, the State’s Chief Information Officer/Office for Technology (CIO/OFT) ensures that the New York state executive branch’s 106 departments — including the departments of transportation, children and family services, and labor, and offices of the governor and homeland security — operate seamlessly to provide services to these citizens. The job of the State’s technology agency is to protect the infrastructure for each of the departments and their combined 250,000 servers, PCs, and laptops. In addition, the CIO/OFT is responsible for overseeing the advancement of technology to improve government efficiency and effectiveness. This is no small task, especially now, as this big responsibility is compounded by the requirement to ensure greater cost efficiency.

Multibillion dollar budget shortfall necessitates cost efficiency
“As New York seeks to address a multibillion dollar budget shortfall, our State agencies must become more cost efficient while simultaneously delivering better government services,” says Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, Ph.D., New York State Chief Information Officer and Director of the Office for Technology. “That’s why we took a long, hard look at the State’s IT procurement process, which was ripe for examination and improvement.” Goals for an improved IT governance and procurement process included:

• Aggregating demand across agencies to better align IT investments with business needs
• Leveraging the buying power of the State to drive down cost
• Leveraging enterprise IT solutions to improve IT returns
• Moving the CIO/OFT approval to the beginning of the procurement cycle

At the same time, with the increase in data breaches across the country and as states face being a natural target because of the massive quantities of personal data they maintain, it was also critical to New York to maintain the same or better levels of protection for their network and data. To protect their 250,000 endpoints, New York State agencies have been using anti-virus solutions from Symantec, McAfee, Check Point, and other third-party vendors. As part of its new approach to IT governance and procurement, the State began looking at consolidating endpoint protection.

"During one of the greatest budget crises our nation has ever seen, cost savings must be a focal point with every transaction. McAfee solutions have not only enabled the State of New York to realize unprecedented cost savings, but McAfee security suites meet our unique needs and provide higher levels of protection at a lower cost to the taxpayer."

Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, Ph.D.
Chief Information Officer, State of New York

Standardizing on McAfee cuts cost of all endpoint security products 75 percent
In its final decision to choose McAfee as its primary security vendor, the State not only met the objective of cutting costs—it gained increased protection to meet today’s challenges. “Standardizing on one vendor for endpoint security makes sense for multiple reasons,” explains Rico Singleton, New York State Deputy Chief Information Officer. “With one vendor, we can simplify administration, cut maintenance and support costs, and accurately predict spending.”

After researching options and analyzing the State’s current installed base, the State of New York chose McAfee Total Protection (ToPS) for Endpoint Advanced for anti-virus protection and more for all 250,000 endpoints. In addition to anti-virus and anti-spyware protection for desktops and servers, ToPS for Endpoint provides: host intrusion prevention for desktops, anti-spam protection for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino servers, email anti-virus gateways, McAfee SiteAdvisor for safe web surfing, network access control, and policy auditing for the desktop.

Also, the State of New York purchased McAfee Total Protection (ToPS) for Data to prevent malicious or inadvertent data leakage from its desktops, especially laptops. The ToPS for Data suite includes endpoint encryption, host data loss prevention (host DLP), and device control.

The combined cost for both McAfee Total Protection suites, including McAfee Platinum Support, was 75 percent less than what the State would have paid for the same three-year period if it had continued to license endpoint security software from multiple vendors. As a result, the State is saving more than $20 million.

“During one of the greatest budget crises our nation has ever seen, cost savings must be a focal point with every transaction,” says Mayberry-Stewart. “McAfee solutions have not only enabled the State of New York to realize unprecedented cost savings, but McAfee security suites meet our unique needs and provide higher levels of protection at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

Easier administration thanks to central management console and integration
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator software, the centralized, web-based management console that comes bundled with both McAfee ToPS for Endpoint and ToPS for Data, dramatically eases the job of managing security for State IT administrators. “The McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator console and the company’s comprehensive, integrated security risk management approach are what set McAfee apart from the competition,” says Singleton. “Simpler administration means ongoing time savings.”

From the start, McAfee ePO eases administration by making deployment of the McAfee solutions easier than deploying competitive solutions. “Once the single McAfee agent is installed on an endpoint, pushing out new agents, hot fixes, service packs, or other update files to that endpoint just entails a few mouse clicks in McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator,” explains Singleton. “We can update an agency or groups of agencies within minutes.”

Because ePO is web-based, with granular, roles-based access, CIO/OFT administrators or IT administrators in agencies large enough to have IT staff can use it without having to install software on their systems. Once logged in to ePO, they see configurable dashboards that display critical security information at a glance in easy-to-use graphs and charts. Built-in and customizable reports can be displayed as dashboard items, scheduled to run at any time, and automated to export or distribute data or initiate immediate action to resolve issues or perform tasks on targeted machines.

Endpoint security increased tenfold
“With McAfee protecting our endpoints, we not only save millions of dollars, we improve our overall security posture and reduce longterm total cost of ownership,” says Singleton. “I would say the additional functionality of McAfee ToPS for Endpoint plus ToPS for Data increases our endpoint security ten times over what it was before.”

Proactive data loss prevention fulfills unfunded state mandate
Recognizing the need to be proactive to prevent data breaches, the State of New York Office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination had previously issued a policy requiring encryption of all State mobile devices.

Unfortunately, many State agencies had no budget to support the mandate. However, because the State could purchase McAfee endpoint and data protection for so much less than what it was previously paying, it can now comply with the encryption policy.

McAfee ToPS for Data endpoint encryption is being rolled out to all 106 New York state agencies. Some of these entities, such as NYS Office for Technology and NYS Parks and Recreation, plan to take advantage of the solution’s host DLP and device control functionality as well.

Strategic partners part of State’s plan
A key component of the State of New York’s plan to improve IT governance and to become more cost efficient is to transition from dealing with suppliers to collaborating with strategic partners. “With greater employee mobility, new technologies, and the increasing volume and sophistication of security threats, having an IT security partner like McAfee becomes even more crucial to our success,” says Singleton. Together, the New York State CIO/OFT and McAfee make a powerful team.