How Tinton Falls keeps firehouses safe from ransomware with Cloudflare Gateway

The firehouse serves as a second home for many firefighters; one where they spend hours working, socializing, exercising, and studying. Naturally, it’s important that they have the resources they need to dispatch people to the right places — one of which is reliable access to the Internet.

But securing a computer like this in a shared environment has challenges: how do you give these administrators and volunteers access to the web, without risking the threats of malware that might arise when they click the wrong link? It’s an issue that Andrew Calvo, Fire Commissioner of Tinton Falls Fire District #1, was all too familiar with.

That’s why he turned to Cloudflare Gateway. Gateway resolves and filters DNS requests at the network level, providing enterprise-grade security protection that is more flexible and affordable than the legacy firewall appliances that have long been applied for similar tasks.

The fire district was able to quickly configure two firehouses to route their traffic through Gateway, with policies maintained and enforced via Cloudflare’s dashboard. In addition to custom block lists Cloudflare Gateway provides automatic, best-in-class protection against malware and phishing attacks.

To do this, Gateway integrates the collective intelligence derived from over 26 million Internet properties on Cloudflare’s network. As soon as an attack is detected against any one of these customers, Cloudflare’s network deploys countermeasures to protect every customer — including the firehouses.

This is just the beginning of the department’s journey with Gateway. With time, Andrew plans to extend Gateway’s protection to the mobile devices installed in the department’s fire trucks.