Case Study: Barnsley Council eliminates ransomware, boosts infrastructure performance and simplifies security management with Bitdefender GravityZone

U.K. municipal government elevates security for citizen services

Barnsley Council, the local government authority in South Yorkshire serving about 228,000 residents, faced repeated ransomware breaches and severe desktop slowdowns caused by its previous security product’s scans. After evaluating several vendors, Barnsley selected Bitdefender and chose Bitdefender GravityZone (Enterprise Security with the integrated Patch Management module) to close protection gaps and simplify management across physical, virtual, cloud, and mobile environments.

Bitdefender Professional Services deployed GravityZone across roughly 3,500 endpoints and servers—covering over 85% of the server estate on day one—and completed the rollout in three days. The result: ransomware and major infections dropped to zero, daily security administration fell from about two hours to ten minutes, patch remediation for a 4–5 person team was reduced from six weeks to a few hours, and users experienced noticeably faster, more reliable machines with no scan-related helpdesk calls.

Barnsley Council

Steve Furniss

ICT Technical Specialist