The Municipality of Veliko Tarnovo has implemented an intergrated cyber protection solution, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, to comply with the requirements of the GDPR easily and effectively and to fit the requirements for the protection of the personal data of its citizens and employees. The platform has replaced the preceding self-written backup scripts and outdated anti-virus program in the Municipality.
THE CHALLENGE
"We needed an automated backup and recovery solution that doesn’t require a large capital expenditure," stated Pavel Hristov, Ph.D., Head of the IT department of Veliko Tarnovo Municipality. “In addition, we wanted a higher-level cybersecurity solution to protect our constituents’ data, and we got that with Acronis Active Protection.”
As a public agency, Veliko Tarnovo Municipality is entrusted with sensitive constituent and personnel data. That puts it under the scrutiny of compliance regimens like GDPR — aimed at protecting sensitive private data – and at risk of fines and other sanctions if it fails to protect that data against theft, tampering or loss. Municipalities face dual pressure: they must defend themselves against cyberattacks like ransomware that seek to profit from their privacy protection obligations, and must preserve the trust of their constituents.
So far, the Municipality of Veliko Tarnovo had been working with a legacy signature-based antivirus product along with manual backups and had to find a way to further protect its data, which in turn required a more robust cybersecurity solution. Expectations were that the solution would perform automated backups based on set schedules, have an agentless recovery solution and ensure cyber security. The relevant technology had to cover the built IT environment based on Microsoft Hyper-V with 3 physical servers and 19 virtual machines.
THE SOLUTION: ACRONIS CYBER PROTECT CLOUD WITH ADVANCED BACKUP
Veliko Tarnovo Municipality partnered with managed security service provider Diamatix to implement Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with Advanced Backup and Active Protection. The implementation took Diamatix only three days, including a demo session for the city’s IT
personnel.
The same Acronis agent that handles backup and recovery uses artificial intelligence to monitor a machine's data operations in real-time. It constantly scans data input and output activity to identify anomalous or suspicious activities typical of ransomware and other malware attacks, such as the mass encryption of files. For example, if a process tries encrypting data or injecting malicious code, Acronis Active Protection immediately stops that process and notifies the admin that it has identified suspicious activity. The administrator then chooses to either block that activity by adding it to the denylist, or to enable it by adding it to the allowlist. If any files were altered or encrypted before the attack was detected and terminated, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud automatically restores them from a local cache — thereby undoing any adverse effects of the attack.
The city now has an automated, scheduled-based backup, recovery and cybersecurity solution that supports Veliko Tarnovo's 19 virtual machines and three physical servers. Monthly and weekly backups of over 1.30 TB are seamlessly and automatically executed to cloud archive storage. Diamatix provides support and monitoring services and oversees backup and recovery to and from a secure cloud location in Frankfurt, Germany.
BENEFITS FOR VELIKO TARNOVO MUNICIPALITY
Implementing Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with Advanced Backup and Active Protection has dramatically increased Veliko Tarnovo’s IT efficiency, regulatory compliance and #CyberFit score. Before implementation, the municipality’s IT department was manually running backup scripts but can now rely on a fully automated backup regimen. The team also now secures all sensitive constituent data and increases compliance by adding cybersecurity and offsite backups via the cloud. Raising its cybersecurity posture has elevated Veliko Tarnovo’s #CyberFit score to 625/850.
Other benefits include cost-effectively offloading support, reporting, monitoring and other professional services to Diamatix. “Our future plans include implementing endpoint advanced protection for all workstations using Acronis products with assistance from Diamatix,” said Hristov.
KEY ADVANTAGES:
• Optimized budget by converting amortized capital costs with fixed monthly operating costs
• Achieved efficiency through a single, integrated console and agentless backup
• Protected sensitive data of the citizens of the municipality
ABOUT VELIKO TARNOVO MUNICIPALITY
The Municipality of Veliko Tarnovo is an institution open to increasing the quality of the services it provides to citizens and businesses. Over the past years, the municipality has launched various initiatives in this direction, including: creation of a single electronic portal; electronic services module; module for checking and paying local taxes and fees; module for SMS parking; community monitoring module; public discussion module; Citizens module - Veliko Tarnovo; Internet calling and messaging service; participation in the Electronic Messaging Environment and the Secure Electronic Service System; electronic register for condominium management; provision of electronic administrative services; an administrative service center in the administrative building of the Veliko Tarnovo Municipal Administration, as well as two outsourced administrative service centers on the territory of the city of Veliko Tarnovo. In this
context, the Municipality of Veliko Tarnovo considers the successful project as a natural continuation of all these initiatives.
The development of the e-Municipality is a key priority and is part of the initiatives undertaken by the Municipality of Veliko Tarnovo for transparency in the municipal administration, a continuous process of development, unification and improvement of the technological and organizational basis, in which civil society has an active participation.
ABOUT ACRONIS
Acronis unifies data protection and cybersecurity to deliver integrated, automated cyber protection that solves the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity and security (SAPAS) challenges of the modern digital world. With flexible deployment models that fit the demands of service providers and IT professionals, Acronis provides superior cyber protection for data, applications and systems with innovative next-generation antivirus, backup, disaster recovery and endpoint protection management solutions powered by AI. With advanced anti-malware powered by cutting-edge machine intelligence and blockchain-based data authentication technologies, Acronis protects any environment – from cloud to hybrid to on-premises – at a low and predictable cost.
Founded in Singapore in 2003 and incorporated in Switzerland in 2008, Acronis now has more than 2,000 employees and offices in 34 locations worldwide. Its solutions are trusted by more than 5.5 million home users and 500,000 companies as well as top-tier professional sports organizations. Acronis products are available through over 50,000 partners and service providers in over 150 countries and 26 languages.