FACILITATING GROWTH THROUGH DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
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CITY OF AURORA: GROWING INTO A SMART CITY
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CITY OF AURORA
ALETA JEFFRESS, CHIEF INFORMATION AND DIGITAL OFFICER AT THE CITY OF AURORA, COLORADO, DETAILS THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND SMART CITY MEASURES BEING PUT INTO PLACE
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leta Jeffress is Chief Information and Digital Officer at the City of Aurora, Colorado. “There’s a lot of growth in Aurora, and we
happen to be in the fortunate position of having land, so our footprint can continue to expand,” says Jeffress. “There’s a lot of development east of the city, and with that comes a lot of different challenges. Infrastructure for instance – how do we ensure access to water? How do we ensure that public safety is covered as the city continues to grow, and then what do we need to do internally to ensure everything is working well?” Jeffress, and the IT department which she heads, have embarked on a program of digital transformation in order to better meet the challenges that growth presents. When Jeffress joined five years ago, she began to implement a series of structural changes. “One of the first steps in ensuring that what we did and how we did it was repeatable was the creation of a project management office in the
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$800mn Budget for all funds
1891
Year founded
4,000
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CITY OF AURORA
“ AS WE LOOK AT SMART CITIES AND, IN AURORA’S CASE, THE PHYSICAL GROWTH THAT WE HAVE, THERE’S JUST SO MUCH 06 OPPORTUNITY” — Aleta Jeffress, Chief Information and Digital Officer
IT department,” she says. “We’re on our third iteration now, and there’s a good process in place. Our customers know what to expect, we can utilize our resources and share updates and move projects along in a timely manner, considering resources and budget.” It was also a matter of systemic upgrades, modernizing legacy systems and moving to the cloud. “We have a solution rationalization modernization effort – an SRM for short. When I got here, we took inventory of all the products we had, really ensuring that we were looking at the entire picture and not just the biggest applications.” Beneficiaries of this approach include the upcoming modernization of computer aided dispatch and ERP systems, and Jeffress is also “working on a workflow implementation that would update how we do our land management, and how we work with developers and permits.” The city also examines its systems in order to determine if they would benefit from cloud transformation. “If the platform is such that we could move to a cloud model, and it makes sense from a cost
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘AURORA TV – AURORA NOW’ 07 and functionality perspective, then
that we have, the data sources, who
that’s likely our first choice. We went
has access to what, and putting all
to a cloud-based solution for sales tax
of that together so that we can more
management in the past year or two,
efficiently manage what we have.”
and that’s been very successful.”
This focus on data will serve the city
Throughout this systems change,
well as it embarks on a new smart city
Jeffress has maintained a focus on
initiative, bringing a new influx of data.
security for the data contained within.
“Aurora was one of the founding cities
“We’ve built a lot more rigor into the
of the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance,”
security side as well as more knowl-
says Jeffress. “We had done a few
edge, both with staff very specific to
independent smart city projects and
security, as well as education across
then realized that we needed to have a
the organization. Looking at it from
bigger strategy. We made a request for
a data perspective, it’s a question of
proposal earlier this year and engaged
understanding the data classifications
with a firm who are putting together w w w.a uro ra g ov. org
City of Aurora's Security Posture Starts with its People Proofpoint email solutions empower and engage city employees in the fight against cyber threats The City Known as the Gateway to the Rockies, Aurora, Colorado, boasts spectacular views of the Rocky Mountains. Aurora is the third-largest city in Colorado with more than 381,000 residents. When Tim McCain was hired as the City's CISO, he and his team found themselves besieged by phishing attacks. Before they could focus on implementing risk-based governance and building security operations, they had to reclaim hours of time being spent on email attacks and cleanup.
The Challenge The existing infrastructure lacked an email gateway. The City had added Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection to its Office 365 deployment, but attacks still occurred regularly, and internally generated spam was still overwhelming. Worse, the team had no visibility and no incident data for improving defenses. For each incident, investigation through the vendor portal could take several days and still not deliver meaningful answers. “Low security efficacy and visibility are bad for any organization,” said McCain. “But the real problem is how attacks affected our people. We needed to defend City employees and services for the community, as well as empower and energize our team.”
“Proofpoint enables us to successfully address the issues at the very heart of risk—people and email.” —Tim McCain, Chief Information Security Officer, City of Aurora
The Solution
Empowered and Engaged
Picking a Pro
McCain’s team is taking on a security operations role with the help of the Proofpoint dashboard and support. They're proactively preventing spam flare-ups. The SecOps team historically would see a 72-hour turn-around from the point of attack to exploitation that in certain cases would result in thousands of emails being sent to City employees. It took hours to remove these from mailboxes. The team has reduced spam flare-ups to zero.
The security and infrastructure teams evaluated solutions, including numerous Proofpoint competitors and Proofpoint. When it came to conducting a POC, the choice was clear. “Proofpoint's level of professionalism, technical ability, and understanding of our needs was way above other vendors,” said McCain. “They made the POC easy and answered every question we asked. They even answered questions we didn't think to ask.” The City of Aurora chose a comprehensive Proofpoint solution. Email Protection protects users against malware, impostor emails, and stopped the flood of spam that was generated from infected systems. If emails are become malicious after delivery or use evasion tactics, Threat Response Auto-Pull (TRAP) enables McCain's team to automatically pull them out of users' mailboxes. Targeted Attack Protection (TAP) proactively stops advanced threats before they reach users’ inboxes, including zero-day attacks and emerging threats. In addition, the TAP Attack Index identifies the City's most attacked people and surfaces targeted ransomware attacks. With Email Encryption, users can now encrypt email messages with a click, enabling the City to more easily meet a wide range of compliance requirements. Proofpoint Security Awareness Training provides phishing reports that enable the team to analyze the City's phishing risks and know where to target additional training.
The Results “Proofpoint's ability to make security real enables us to engage everyone — from City leadership on down,” said McCain. “My team's confidence has grown, and now they feel like ‘CyberCSI Aurora,’ which is great.” McCain said he can't overstate the value of Proofpoint solutions and regular business reviews with his Proofpoint account team. Proofpoint is always available as the team gains leading-edge security knowledge and experience, giving them confidence. In fact, deployment of the Proofpoint platform has been accomplished faster than planned, which has enabled Tim to shift focus to roadmap projects almost a year ahead of time. “Proofpoint enables us to successfully address the issues at the very heart of risk—people and email,” said McCain. “Their support is amazing. I can say without hesitation that Proofpoint is an unqualified success.” For more information, visit www.proofpoint.com
CITY OF AURORA
10 and helping us drive a smart city strategy. That’s helped us to refine our mission and our vision for what smart cities should be for Aurora. For instance, we’re in the process of finalizing a purchase of our streetlights, which would then allow us to expand on how we use them for our various smart city initiatives.” Facilitating change is not just about putting different technological initiatives in place and hoping for the best, however. “Culture is a big part,” says Jeffress. “Whenever you do change management, you have to
“ THERE’S A LOT OF GROWTH IN AURORA, AND WE HAPPEN TO BE IN THE FORTUNATE POSITION OF HAVING LAND, SO OUR FOOTPRINT CAN CONTINUE TO EXPAND” — Aleta Jeffress, Chief Information and Digital Officer
make sure that the culture is ready
remains important is making sure
and accepting, because otherwise it
that you hire the right people. That’s
just creates resistance. We sometimes
especially true in technology where
think of innovation as these big-ticket
it’s a continuing challenge due to the
items, but it’s important to figure out
low unemployment rate and number
a way to allow people to innovate
of open positions.”
themselves, to be comfortable with
The IT department itself can act as
change and to be able to make
a harbinger of change for surrounding
suggestions on how things could be
organizations, as Jeffress explains.
different.” For Jeffress, it’s crucial to
“The City of Aurora has about 21
remember the role of people amidst
different departments. The IT organi-
the technology transformation.
zation here supports all of them, so we
“Although we’re implementing a lot of
have to be very aware of what’s going
technology and a lot of digital transfor-
on in each to ensure we’re in a place
mation, one of the things that really
where we can help them to succeed.
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Aleta Jeffress Aleta Jeffress is the Chief Information and Digital Officer for the City of Aurora. She has over 20 years’ experience as a successful executive business leader and technologist building relationships between business and technology to enable digital transformation and market growth. She drives innovative strategies for business and IT leadership, and has developed teams for Cybersecurity and Project Management Offices from the ground up. Her career began in startup software companies where she started in a call center environment and moved through private and public sector organizations in the areas of software quality, development, product management, security, and ultimately leadership.
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CITY OF AURORA
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“ WHENEVER YOU DO CHANGE MANAGEMENT, YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT THE CULTURE IS READY AND ACCEPTING, BECAUSE OTHERWISE IT JUST CREATES RESISTANCE” — Aleta Jeffress, Chief Information and Digital Officer
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CITY OF AURORA
C O M PA N Y FACT S
• City of Aurora has 21 different departments • City of Aurora was a founding member of the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance in 2017
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We need to understand what the solutions are. It’s not just ‘here’s your phone and here’s your computer’, it’s ‘how are you trying to meet the goals?’ Whether it’s the animal shelter or public safety or the water department or the library, the question is: ‘are your constituents being served and how can we help you to enable that?’” Ultimately, as Aurora continues its transformation journey with the likes of the smart city initiative, Jeffress considers it vital to embrace rather than fear change. “Growth is just very positive. Some people might be intimidated by that, but really nothing stays the same. As we look at smart cities and, in Aurora’s case, the physical growth that we have, there’s just so much opportunity. We have to make sure that we take a step back and really look at the opportunity and leverage the opportunities that are in front of us. Whether that’s through process change or digital transformation, it is what’s needed to propel us into the next era.”
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City of Aurora 15151 E. Alameda Pkwy Aurora, CO 80012 T 303-739-7760 www.auroragov.org