Case Study: City of Boston achieves secure cloud-first modernization and reduced cyber risk with Zscaler

The City of Boston moves securely to the cloud to modernize its services

The City of Boston set out to modernize citizen services by shrinking its data center footprint and adopting a cloud-first strategy, but growing reliance on web-based applications exposed an inefficient, unreliable internet security stack. With 5,500 users to support, the city needed a secure, scalable solution and chose a zero-trust approach to prevent unauthorized access and lateral movement across its network.

Boston deployed Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) to provide cloud-delivered security as a service—proxying traffic through the cloud rather than adding on-premises hardware—and paired it with a new identity and access portal. The platform improved visibility and reduced risk, blocking 1.2 million threats and preventing 33.1 million web-policy violations in Q1 2019, supporting 47% year-over-year bandwidth growth and cutting website-related help-desk tickets from 10–15 per week to 1–2 per month.

City of Boston

Greg McCarthy

Chief Information, Security Officer