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SUCCESS STORY Chelsea Groton Bank The Irreplaceable Benefits of Continuous Security Monitoring For more than 160 years Chelsea Groton Bank has helped individuals families and businesses meet their financial wellness goals and succeed beyond expectation As a full service mutually owned bank with more than 1 6 billion in assets and 14 locations throughout Connecticut the bank focuses on bringing together the best in digital and in person capabilities 14 Locations 1 6 Billion in Assets Groton CT Chelsea Groton Bank is a fullservice mutually owned bank with over 1 6 billion in assets Chelsea Groton Bank s products and services include consumer banking business banking mortgage and business lending cash management financial planning and financial education classes With 14 branch locations throughout New London County and a Loan Production Office in Hartford County Chelsea Groton Bank also provides online and mobile banking 24 hour telephone banking and nationwide ATM banking for individuals families and businesses Building trust and establishing a sense of security are vital components of offering the most advanced and innovative banking capabilities To that end Chelsea Groton places a high priority on cybersecurity and works hard to ensure its customers information remains safe from the latest cyber threats Larry Walker First Vice President and Director of Technology at Chelsea Groton said the bank experiences 250 000 cyber events every 15 minutes To handle that much activity Walker and his IT staff needed a reliable security partner to help protect the bank and its loyal customers from the multitude of cyberattacks That s why Chelsea Groton began using COCC s Continuous Security Monitoring in 2019 Using Continuous Security Monitoring provided by COCC s Security Operations Center SOC Chelsea Groton leverages COCC s comprehensive suite of cybersecurity solutions and best in class security team to provide around the clock security for its customers To make sure Continuous Security Monitoring is working properly in addition to proving its efficacy to bank executives and boards Walker and his team test the solution annually But how can they be satisfied with the test results without dealing with an actual cybersecurity incident Simple They manufacture one
The Proof is in the Testing Walker said Chelsea Groton performs two penetration tests every year These tests satisfy audit requirements strengthen the bank s cybersecurity posture and ensure COCC s SOC performs at optimal capability Walker said the bank keeps both tests a secret from COCC In order to truly test COCC s Continuous Security Monitoring and SOC team we need it to seem like a normal day said Walker Then we deploy a simulated cyber event spreading through our network We test to see if the SOC tools can tell the IP of the attacker which accounts were compromised and which systems were probed In addition Chelsea Groton tests the SOC dashboards the following day s reports generated about the event and the SOC s notification process to ensure Chelsea Groton is quickly informed about the event Finally Walker shares the test results with the bank s board It s an arduous process but an important measurement of cyber protection Once during an exam the auditors said they haven t seen cyber tools as strong as ours in a bank our size said Walker When a bank experiences the number and frequency of Chelsea Groton s events the importance of Continuous Security Monitoring s 24 7 365 protection cannot be overstated To do everything that Continuous Security Monitoring does for us it s not possible for us to handle internally said Walker It would take all five of us to pull off the kind of monitoring we get from COCC They help us make sure minor events don t become catastrophic ones Real Time Visibility Through the Continuous Security Monitoring suite Walker has access to a dashboard that gives him realtime visibility into employee workstations user accounts bandwidth usage and more Continuous Security Monitoring gives me access to a lot of information and data that I just didn t have before he said Every day Walker receives a detailed report that includes crucial insight into the bank s infrastructure including An outline of every login attempt from the night before A log of registry keys read during registry scans A list of every computer accessed in the last seven days by the bank s helpdesk technicians To capture information like this on its own Walker said the bank would have needed to add expertise and technical training as well as storage tools and other hardware the bank didn t have in place 100 Executive Boulevard Southington CT 06489 888 678 0444 www cocc com
Real Time Top Tier Logging and Data Management As Chelsea Groton grew past 1 billion in assets it became critical to find a solution to capture store and cross reference logs events forensic data and more Walker said there are enterprise software solutions that perform these important functions but the costs associated with such solutions in terms of money time and resources were too high for a bank of Chelsea Groton s size Luckily COCC s Continuous Security Monitoring has an industry leading data security and monitoring platform built in and available reducing the time resources and costs it would take for Chelsea Groton to set up and implement such a solution on its own A True Cybersecurity Partnership Keeping a community bank safe and secure is a big job and Walker said his partnership with COCC gives him piece of mind My favorite part of working with COCC s Continuous Security Monitoring is when an alert or event happens I have someone I can call who can see my data and help me see what s going on he said COCC COCC a recognized leader in delivering innovated comprehensive technology and partnerships offers feature rich modern standards based core and digital banking solutions combining intuitive user experiences and APIs to streamline advanced fintech integrations COCC clients leverage a complete suite of modern financial technology solutions COCC has been client owned for over 50 years acting as a partner to clients with an unmatched focus on service to help community banks and credit unions meet their unique and ever changing needs To learn more visit www cocc com 100 Executive Boulevard Southington CT 06489 888 678 0444 www cocc com