Executive Summary
A municipal government serving 250,000 residents had witnessed neighboring cities fall victim to devastating ransomware attacks. They engaged Scapien to proactively identify and address security gaps before becoming the next headline.
The Challenge
The city's IT department struggled with:
- Limited budget and competing priorities
- Aging infrastructure with systems past end-of-life
- Citizen data protection requirements
- Distributed operations across 40+ departments
- Political pressure following regional ransomware incidents
The Scapien Approach
Scapien conducted a comprehensive assessment and ongoing program:
- Attack Path Analysis - Identified realistic paths to critical systems
- Priority Remediation Roadmap - Risk-ranked actions within budget constraints
- Tabletop Exercises - Prepared staff for incident scenarios
- Continuous Monitoring - Ongoing validation of remediation effectiveness
Results
Within 6 months of engagement:
- 12 critical attack paths identified and remediated
- Ransomware simulation showed 0% success rate (down from 67%)
- $4.2M potential losses avoided based on regional incident analysis
- City council confidence in IT security improved significantly
- Cyber insurance premiums reduced by 23%
Key Takeaways
"We were one unpatched server away from disaster," admitted the City CIO. "Scapien helped us find and fix the gaps that would have made headlines. Now we're sharing our approach with other municipalities."