Municipality Bergen op Zoom improves its digital resilience

| minute read

Municipalities digitally serve customers and companies as best as they can. Because of the increased digitization, the importance of information security and privacy has risen. The same situation holds for the Noord-Brabant municipality of Bergen op Zoom.

Municipalities digitally serve customers and companies as best as they can. Because of the increased digitization, the importance of information security and privacy has risen. The same situation holds for the Noord-Brabant municipality of Bergen op Zoom. 

Digital workplace 

“The municipality thinks about digital safety and protecting the interests of its civilians all the time,” says  Hans Baaten of Bergen op Zoom. “We want to lift our digital resilience to a better place. To prevent security incidents in the future, we had to take measures to improve security in the current, Office365 based, digital workplace of our employees.”  

Good tips 

Bergen op Zoom picked Sopra Steria amongst several other candidates. The IT service provider from Nieuwegein was the best in experience, professionalism, and price/quality ratio. “Even during the intake interview, the Sopra Steria team came up with several good tips to enhance our digital resilience. It was an immediate quick win and a sign that the Sopra Steria consultants have the knowledge and expertise to help us. Further down the line, it became even clearer that Sopra Steria understands the impact of security risks for a municipality very well. We were pleasantly surprised by the craftsmanship of the Sopra Steria team, its focus on collaboration, and its continuous search for possibilities to improve. The collaboration between our customer team and Sopra Steria was also enjoyable. There was a relaxed but at the same time professional and realistic way of working.”  

Planning each step 

Based on the Cyber detection & Response solution, Sopra Steria's multidisciplinary High-performance team developed a structured, concise roadmap that balanced practical feasibility and cyber security vision. The final advisory rapport clearly states which recommendations should have priority and which ones can be executed later, depending on budget, time, and means. “Budget was always a conversation topic. As a municipality, it is always nice to know what we have to prioritize moneywise to optimize our digital resilience continuously. It’s very gratifying that Sopra Steria joined us in thinking about this.”  

In good hands

With the recommendations of Sopra Steria’s rapport, Bergen op Zoom can optimize its digital safety even further. “It is our responsibility to keep the data of our civilians in good hands. They need the security that we handle their data well. It’s only normal they expect this. With Sopra Steria’s research and advice, we can better guarantee our civilians’ data’s confidentiality, integrity, and availability.” 

Sopra Steria Solution for Cyberdetection & Response

“IT has become a bigger factor for almost every company’s day-to-day operation now,” says Peter Groenewegen, Business Lead of Cyber Detection & Response at Sopra Steria. With the size and complexity of the IT environment, the chances of security incidents also grow. “The impact of these events on an organization can be enormous. Unfortunately, it is impossible to prevent all security incidents for many reasons. Hackers find new possibilities to penetrate systems and networks again and again. At the same time, organizations often have too little knowledge of their IT environment or use IT that can not be updated.” 

“Luckily, it is possible to minimize the business impact of cyber security incidents on organizations,” Peter continues, “This is precisely what we do with the Sopra Steria Solution for Cyberdetection & Response. We offer an integral approach, preparing organizations for a potential cyber security incident and its business impact. We advise concrete measures to prevent cyber security incidents and provide ways to detect them. Next, we act together on the detected cyber security events.