Montreal's Secure Voter Registration: A Case Study on Check Point VPN
Technology Category
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Application Security
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Endpoint Security
Applicable Industries
- Cities & Municipalities
- National Security & Defense
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Smart City Operations
- Tamper Detection
Services
- Testing & Certification
About The Customer
The City of Montreal, which started as a small fur trading settlement in the mid-1600s, has grown to a population of over 1.8 million, making it the largest city in the Canadian province of Quebec. The City runs its government operations on a network of 25,000 users protected by seven Check Point FireWall-1 firewalls. Nine hundred users work remotely, accessing the city network securely through a VPN-1 Power gateway and SecuRemote client software. The City is always looking for new technology that can make government operations more efficient and secure.
The Challenge
The City of Montreal faced a significant challenge when it was required to merge with 28 surrounding suburbs, a move that was met with considerable opposition. This led to the promise of referendums to reverse the mergers, provided sufficient voters registered for the referendum. To facilitate this process, the City needed to set up temporary voter registration centers, which required a secure and efficient system to manage sensitive voter information. The City had to ensure total security for this sensitive data, provide a quick setup for these temporary centers, and supply efficient security management. The challenge was further compounded by the need to update the centralized voter list in real time, reducing paper volume and saving time over the previous manual process of collecting paper forms for later data entry.
The Solution
To expedite the referendum process, the City of Montreal utilized virtual private networks (VPNs) on the Internet for the first time in an election scenario. They opened 28 temporary centers where citizens could register for the referendum. From these offices, the centralized voter list was updated live in real time via ADSL connections to the Internet. To ensure the security of the sensitive voter information, diskless PCs were used to prevent any confidential data from being retained in the temporary locations. Check Point UTM-1 Edge appliances were used to create secure site-to-site VPNs for linking the offices to the City registrar. The City's security consultant, GoSecure, recommended UTM-1 Edge as the most secure and cost-effective solution for such a rapid, large-scale, and short-term deployment. The appliances were set up in minutes and provided the highest level of security to protect the transmission of sensitive voter information over the always-on ADSL connection.
Operational Impact
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