Case Study: City of Montreal achieves secure, rapid voter registration with Check Point Software

Montreal Elects Check Point VPN For Secure Voter Registration

The City of Montreal, which supports a municipal network of tens of thousands of users, faced an urgent challenge when newly authorized demerger referendums required rapid voter registration across the island. The city needed to build, verify and update a master voter list in a very short time while protecting sensitive voter information and enabling temporary registration sites in shopping malls and rented offices.

Montreal deployed Check Point UTM-1 Edge appliances to create encrypted site-to-site VPNs and used diskless PCs at 28 ADSL-connected registration centers so updates could be transmitted live to the central registrar. The devices were lab-tested and rolled out in about a week, reduced paper handling, provided centralized management via SmartCenter, and proved reliable enough to become part of the city’s standard election process (expanded to 30 sites in 2005).

City of Montreal

Normand Jette

Telecommunications Specialist