Introduction of the Cygna Auditor Platform at the city of Zurich — OIZ

City of Zurich

Zurich is a city, political municipality, and the capital of the canton of the same name in Switzerland. Zurich is considered the economic center of Switzerland. The entire economic area in and around Zurich is also referred to as the ‚Greater Zurich Area.‘ It is particularly characterized by low tax rates and a high quality of life, which is why some international corporations have a base in Zurich. Due to its global economic significance, the city of Zurich is counted among the Global Cities.

Legally speaking, the city of Zurich is a Swiss municipality, with a population of approximately 404,783 people, making it the most populous city in Switzerland. Approximately 222,347 eligible voters elect a 125-member city council every four years, which enacts laws and ordinances, and a nine-member city council that acts as the government and manages the operational business. In total, there are currently 43 different service departments.

The citywide IT is centrally managed by the „Organisation and Informatik“ (OIZ) service department. The OIZ is responsible for both the operation and further development of the central IT basic infrastructure, as well as for IT services and for ensuring a uniform IT strategy. At the present time, OIZ employs around 380 internal IT specialists. In addition to the central IT, there are IT specialists in the service departments who are responsible for managing specific specialized applications.

In this context, OIZ also researched products that enable the monitoring and logging of Active Directory objects and encountered N3K at the X-Days, the most important business and networking fair in Switzerland. In February 2012, the first tests were carried out. For this purpose, N3K, the only Cygna distributor in Switzerland, made available all modules of the Cygna Auditor Platform. N3K Network Systems recommended OIZ conduct a Proof of Concept, which also met the needs and approach of the customer. During this POC, OIZ had the opportunity to run through practical real-life scenarios to assess the practicality of Cygna‘s products. After successfully testing the functionality, the city of Zurich decided to implement all 7 modules that were tested, as many substantive synergies resulted from the combination of these modules. These synergies are largely based on the architectural ‚One Platform‘ approach of the Cygna Auditor Platform. All modules communicate exclusively with one database and can intelligently network the data contained therein. Because the „Auditor for AD“ records all changes in the AD without gaps and this information is available in real-time in the database, Cygna is able to perform a roll-back (complete/incremental) or online restoration at any conceivable point in the past without regard to backup times. Furthermore, on this data basis, it is also possible, for example, to define alerting and prevention rules for AD changes.

In May 2012, the Cygna Auditor Platform was successfully introduced, adhering to the planned completion date. Despite minor difficulties during the implementation, N3K and OIZ achieved a seamless integration of Cygna products into the already existing environment.

Cyrill Rickenbach, department head at OIZ, considers the modules of the Cygna Auditor Platform to be very forward-looking. Moreover, OIZ purchased the Auditor SQL Server in March 2013, which provides auditing functions for Microsoft SQL Server.