Bill Hopkins, IT Manager for the City of Keizer, Oregon, leads the mission-critical operations for a dynamic municipal government serving approximately 35,000 residents.
Operating with a lean, two-person team, Bill’s centralized IT department provides essential support for public safety, administration, and infrastructure, all while tackling the public sector’s constant challenge: delivering more with less. Beyond supporting city operations, the Keizer IT team also dedicates time to assisting local small businesses that lack the resources for full-time IT support, offering guidance and technical expertise to help them stay secure and connected. This spirit of community support, paired with a commitment to efficiency and security, ultimately drove the city to seek an infrastructure solution that could deliver enterprise-level protection while meeting strict budget requirements
The Challenge: Cost, Control, and the Search for Increased Security
The City of Keizer faced an ongoing challenge in finding a cost-effective and resilient data storage solution that could strengthen data integrity. Despite implementing standard security measures such as endpoint protection, network monitoring, firewalls, and regular backups, the city previously experienced a ransomware attack that disrupted essential services and compromised sensitive records, including police electronic evidence.
When exploring solutions to prevent a recurrence, Bill faced the familiar public-sector hurdle: unsustainable costs from proprietary vendors. Traditional, enterprise-grade storage solutions came with prices that were not fiscally responsible for a small city. Moreover, these solutions would have introduced vendor lock-in, limiting the city's control over its own infrastructure and data.
The Need for Data Sovereignty and Resilience
The most critical challenge was achieving higher control and security over sensitive public data. Having endured a breach that put legal evidence at risk, Bill understood that their defense strategy could not afford to fail again. They required an airtight, on-premise network defense capable of stopping an active attack in its tracks. The previous, costly experience hardened Bill's resolve to find a solution that guaranteed immediate recovery without ever having to pay a ransom again.
Bill recalled the severity of the past event: "They encrypted about a dozen of our servers... We negotiated, and we had to pay."
The Solution: Total Control and the Ransomware-Activated Fuse
The search for a true, robust, and open alternative led Bill directly to 45Drives. The immediate cost savings proved transformative, allowing the city to implement an enterprise-grade platform that would have otherwise been financially out of reach from legacy vendors.
Bill not only achieved massive cost savings but also gained complete control through open-source software, free from restrictive licensing and vendor lock-in. The partnership provided the city with a powerful Storinator system equipped with SnapShield, 45Drives’ innovative, behavior-based ransomware protection.
SnapShield does not just rely on perimeter defense; it uses real-time behavioral analysis to monitor for patterns of a mass-encryption event. The moment ransomware behavior is detected, the system acts as a “fuse”, isolating the infected client almost instantly to halt the attack from spreading across the storage network. At the same time, SnapShield immediately alerts administrators of the incident, ensuring they can respond in real time while all other uninfected workstations remain unaffected and continue running normally.
Beyond Cost Savings: Measurable Outcomes and Cyber-Assurance
The deployment of the 45Drives solution with SnapShield delivered immediate, measurable operational improvements, shifting the City’s posture from reactive defense to proactive.
Instant Containment to a "Non-Event"
The ultimate measure of success was enabling fast recovery. SnapShield can contain attacks in seconds or faster, limiting damage to only a handful of files. The intelligent snapshot system automatically identifies and selects the affected files for rollback, allowing the IT department to restore clean versions instantly. This ensures they will never again be forced to pay a ransom to regain access to critical data. They can instantly roll back to a clean snapshot, ensuring it will never be forced to pay a ransom again.
Bill powerfully summarized the importance of this capability for the City's operations: "It gives me a backup in case of a worst-case scenario."
The real transformation is the fundamental change in the scale of the incident. Bill proudly confirmed the new reality: "I only have to worry about potential files that were infected instead of an entire server being affected." With SnapShield, restoring is just as fast. Bill can instantly roll back to a clean snapshot of the impacted files, bringing systems back online within minutes instead of days.
By choosing 45Drives, the City of Keizer proved that a public sector IT team can break free from expensive vendor lock-in, achieve beyond status quo security and resilience, and uphold its commitment to fiscal responsibility and citizen service.
Empowering Your Infrastructure Decisions
If your organization is ready to reduce the risk of proprietary infrastructure with a high-performance, open-platform solution that delivers full data control and increased ransomware defense, 45Drives is the answer.
We empower government agencies, enterprises, and IT teams to achieve mission-critical resilience and fiscal responsibility. Combining the reliability and accountability of legacy vendors with the flexibility and security of open-source, 45Drives offers the best of both worlds: scalable, secure, and high-capacity enterprise storage solutions without vendor lock-in.
Learn how 45Drives empowers government agencies, enterprises, and IT teams to achieve mission-critical resilience and maintain fiscal responsibility.
