Customer Story

Illinois State Treasurer Uses CrowdStrike to Protect Public Funds and Deliver a “Security First” Strategy

Founded in 1818, the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office is dedicated to protecting the state’s financial portfolio. The agency manages approximately $38 billion, comprising local and state funds, retirement accounts and college savings plans. A recent overhaul of the aging IT environment reduced the organization’s server count by over 90%, slashed IT-related costs by 40% and cut carbon emissions by 27 tons. To protect the new infrastructure, a security solution from one of the state’s existing suppliers was deployed, but it immediately started generating nearly 30,000 false positives a day that quickly overwhelmed the in-house team. A rapid proof of concept (POC) was conducted with solutions from the CrowdStrike Falcon® portfolio and went so well that the incumbent tools were immediately discarded. The improvements in resource utilization and team effectiveness have meant that the CrowdStrike solution paid for itself in less than a year. CrowdStrike was chosen in part because of the ability to cope with complexity and the opinion that the Falcon platform uniquely offers a true “single pane of glass” experience for security professionals. With a cloud-native platform and lightweight agent, the CrowdStrike solution was implemented with minimal impact to business operations and delivered a seamless cutover for end users. Enhanced visibility and threat intelligence provide a fully comprehensive picture of potential attacks across the entire environment.
I don't want just to be sold something, I want a partnership where we can work and grow together. I continue to promote CrowdStrike because this is exactly the relationship we have built.
Joseph Daniels Chief Information Officer
Illinois State Treasurer

Challenges

  • Limited funding frequently results in an outdated, inefficient and uncoordinated IT environment, creating significant challenges when attempting to secure digital assets
  • Complex financial compliance requirements impose continual strain on resources
  • Legacy security tools generate excessive numbers of false positives and low-priority alerts that exceed the capacity of security teams
  • The magnitude of state funds under management — commonly exceeding many tens of billions of dollars — represents a compelling target for cybercriminals

Solution

  • The Illinois State Treasurer’s Office has implemented the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform to secure public funds and support its digital transformation to a predominantly cloud-based infrastructure

Results

  • Investment recovered in less than one year through improvements in resource utilization
  • Tangible reinforcement of treasurer’s “security first” strategy
  • Demonstrated capabilities by stopping 27 independent ransomware threats deliberately launched to test defenses and thwarted live attack on a backup server
  • 360° threat visibility delivers protection across the complex hybrid environment

All CrowdStrike solutions deployed

  • Falcon Complete for 24/7 managed detection and response
  • Falcon Intelligence
  • Falcon Device Control
  • Falcon Discover
  • Falcon Insight EDR
  • Falcon OverWatch™
  • Falcon Prevent™
  • Falcon Spotlight
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