How Explore St. Louis Gains Efficiencies and Cost Savings

by Consolidating to One Cyber Security Vendor

INDUSTRY
Business Services

HEADQUARTERS
St. Louis, Missouri

COMPANY SIZE
150 employees

OVERVIEW

The St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission
(Explore St. Louis) is the official destination
marketing organization responsible for selling St.
Louis City and St. Louis County as a convention,
meeting and leisure destination. As the operator of
the America’s Center

Convention Complex, Explore St. Louis works to
attract city-wide conventions, hotel meetings,
sporting events, group tours and individual leisure
travelers to St. Louis, in collaboration with more
than 750 regional partners, including hotels,
restaurants, attractions and service providers.

OUR SOLUTION

Since partnering with Check Point, we’re more efficient
and can do more with less. This means that our
relatively small team can be more proactive and spend
our time focusing on time-sensitive IT issues.
Darren Ison, Director of IT at Explore St. Louis.

CHALLENGE

As a public commission, all of Explore St. Louis’s information is public, including personally identifiable
information (PII). This makes protecting user data information critical for the organization. However, Explore
St. Louis found that successfully securing all facets of its security infrastructure properly, using a small team,
continued to grow increasingly daunting.

Darren Ison, Director of IT at Explore St. Louis, and his team are not only responsible for securing the
organization’s IT infrastructure and endpoints, they also must fortify the cyber security of America’s Center
Convention Complex, which hosts an average of 109 yearly events, attracting 600,000 visitors every year.
According to Darren, “One of our biggest challenges is our large external production network, which spans
the St. Louis Convention Center and the Dome. Because of this, the number of potential breach entry points
is vast, ranging from the center’s automation systems, IoT devices, to the Wi-Fi network.”

SOLUTION

Explore St. Louis adopted the Infinity Platform Agreement to purchase its products. Darren Ison, Director of
IT at Explore St. Louis explained “We chose the Infinity contract model for the flexibility it provides and the
predictable OpEx budgetary spend I could have over three years. Things can change quickly in cyber security
and the agreement allows us to expand as needed.”

Explore St. Louis leverages a range of solutions that provide the organization with end-to-end protection.
This includes Quantum Security Gateways, which deliver uncompromising performance with advanced threat
prevention, policy management, remote access VPN and more across the on-premise network. Darren said,
“We chose Quantum Gateways for their low CVEs, and its great reputation in the market. I am aware of a lot of
well-known companies that use Quantum Security Gateways and that says a lot.”

Darren Ison also uses Quantum Smart-1 Cloud for its comprehensive security management of on-premise
security gateways, and perimeter devices, including security event analytics and reporting from a single,
centralized Smart Console.

Layered on top of the network security solution, Explore St. Louis, deployed Check Points workforce security
solutions. This includes Harmony Email and Collaboration, which detects and blocks the most advanced
phishing attacks across inbound, outbound and internal communications. Ison explained that Harmony Email
and Collaboration has two unique advantages over competitors.

The shared Harmony Email and Collaboration provides two working modalities – in-line or off-line. This
allows you to choose how you use the tool. “We have the ability to use it inline or passive, and this ensures
our users get their email in a timely manner and we still keep them protected. Harmony Email also gives me
unique insights into my Azure environment, allowing me to quickly and easily see where users log in and what
they do in the environment, giving us extra visibility and protection.”

Another workforce security solution Explore St. Louis leverages is Harmony Endpoint, which provides
comprehensive, 360-degree endpoint protection at the highest level. As part of their consolidation, Explore St.
Louis was looking for a single pane of glass and therefore chose the Check Point endpoint solution for its full
visibility into their endpoints. Darren stated the product made a lot of sense for them and allowed them to
consolidate VPN function. It has also helped the small IT team Darren leads to provide more comprehensive
security for the complex environment they manage.

“One of our favorite Harmony Endpoint features is the ease of deployment – packaging, deployment, removal
and upgrading are all dead simple.”

After evaluating competitive Infinity Managed Detection and Response (MDR) providers, Darren decided
Infinity Managed Detection and Response (MDR) was an ideal fit because it offers a complete SecOps-as-a-
Service offering that takes a people-driven approach, leveraging Check Point’s top analysts, researchers and
incident response staff. The Infinity MDR dashboard provides in depth visibility into day-to-day attacks, as well
as permissions and tickets. In addition to the insights the dashboard provides on everything from endpoint,
gateway and email events, it allows for modification as needed.

“Given the size of our team, the Infinity MDR approach made perfect sense,” explained Darren. “We can rely
on Check Point’s expertise to monitor our infrastructure, including the network, all endpoints, email, cloud
and even IoT devices. It’s a huge advantage to have the Infinity MDR team react and handle issues on our
behalf, which allows us to focus on other priorities.”

OUTCOME

Since partnering with Check Point, Explore St. Louis has become more proactive and able to respond more
quickly to threats because the IT team receives information on vulnerabilities and potential breaches in real-
time. The organization is more secure and Darren sleeps better at night knowing Infinity MDR is on duty.

“What surprised me most about consolidating our security products with Check Point was how many issues
we missed previously,” said Darren. “We’re far more confident in our security defenses, and I definitely
sleep better at night knowing the Infinity MDR team is handling threats and issues for us. Check Point has
exceeded all my expectations, and I couldn’t be happier with not only how attentive they are to our specific
needs and concerns, but also the consistent and thorough protection Check Point’s solutions provide.”

The consolidation also has saved Explore St. Louis money by eliminating the need to hire more in-house
security staff or buying disparate, disconnected solutions to secure the organization’s infrastructure and
data.

Check Point continues to provide Darren and his team with visibility into the day-to-day threats, permissions
and support tickets via the centralized dashboard which provides insight into everything, including email,
endpoint and firewall-related events.

As for the future, Darren is excited about AI’s potential to deliver even better incident mitigation and
response.

“I was thrilled to hear that Check Point will soon be offering Infinity AI Copilot, which, in my opinion, has the
potential to revolutionize threat hunting, analysis and resolution,” he explained. “It will be a game changer for
us. We’ll be able to utilize it to do time consuming, but extremely important tasks like threat hunting.”

ABOUT CHECK POINT

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. is a leading AI-powered, cloud-delivered
cyber security platform provider protecting over 100,000 organizations worldwide. Check Point leverages the
power of AI everywhere to enhance cyber security efficiency and accuracy through its Infinity Platform, with
industry-leading catch rates enabling proactive threat anticipation and smarter, faster response times. The
comprehensive platform includes cloud-delivered technologies consisting of Check Point Harmony to secure
the workspace, Check Point CloudGuard to secure the cloud, Check Point Quantum to secure the network,
and Check Point Infinity Core Services for collaborative security operations and services.