Case Study: City of Lewiston achieves automated threat detection and network protection without hiring an SOC analyst with AT&T Cybersecurity (AlienVault USM)

Little green aliens help City of Lewiston protect their network

The City of Lewiston, Idaho, a small municipal IT shop supporting public Wi‑Fi, county links and online bill pay, faced the challenge of protecting a complex city network with just five IT staff and no dedicated security operations analyst. They needed an easy-to-use threat detection solution because traditional SIEMs required specialist skills and hiring a SOC analyst would be costly.

After a proof-of-concept and deployment of AlienVault (integrated with Spiceworks/OTX), the team quickly detected and blocked malicious IPs, uncovered a former employee’s unauthorized access attempts, and discovered an exposed RDP hole, brute‑force attacks, missing patches (Heartbleed/Poodle) and orphaned service accounts. The appliance gave them actionable alerts without hiring extra security staff, improving network security and enabling faster incident response.

City of Lewiston

Danny Santiago

Systems And Applications Administrator