Protecting Citizens' Data

Kaare Christensen, Head of IT and Digitalization at Norddjurs Municipality, explains how partnering with CSIS for 24/7 SOC (Security Operations Centre) monitoring has helped the municipality protect sensitive citizen data, react quickly to potential threats, and give operations staff the confidence to “sleep peacefully at night.”  

The Challenge: High Threat Levels, Limited Capacity

Norddjurs Municipality has around three and a half thousand employees, of whom about three thousand are IT users. Every day, they handle large volumes of sensitive information about citizens — data that is highly attractive to cybercriminals.

“The threat situation in Danish municipalities, and not least in Norddjurs, is high at present,” Kaare explains. “We see many attempts at attacks, and there is no doubt we have data that could be very interesting for unauthorized persons to get hold of.”

Technically, Norddjurs was already in a relatively strong position.

“We actually had a high technical security setup,” Kaare says. The challenge was that the municipality didn’t have the right skills and resources to work with it.

In practice, this resulted in:

• Large amounts of security data and alerts
• Limited capacity to analyse and prioritise
• A real risk of not reacting in time when something suspicious appeared

“This means that we had a lot of data lying around that we were not able to act on — and certainly not in time,” Kaare recalls.

The Solution: 24/7 SOC Monitoring with CSIS

With the threat level rising and internal resources stretched, Norddjurs recognised that it needed a different approach to security.3,500 employees, of whom about 3,000

For Kaare and his team, the ambition was to “create a different security setup” that enabled them to respond quickly and efficiently to threats.

That led Norddjurs to CSIS, which Kaare identified as a partner capable of supporting on the SOC side—augmenting their ability to monitor, detect, analyse and respond to security threats 24/7.

In Practice: From Suspicious Login to Immediate Action

One specific incident shows the value of the revised setup.

One night, an employee was flagged as logging in from Iraq. CSIS reacted to it immediately and notified the Norddjurs team who moved quickly.

“We shut down the user within a few minutes,” Kaare says. This allowed the team to investigate and discover that the employee actually was in Iraq. While there was nothing malicious behind the event, the way it was handled was crucial: “We shut it down quickly and could then investigate in peace and quiet afterwards.”

This is exactly what 24/7 monitoring should deliver: rapid, decisive action while the situation is unclear, followed by calm investigation once the immediate risk is under control.

The Impact: Peace of Mind for Operations

“CSIS monitoring provides a sense of security,” Kaare says.

The value is knowing that CSIS is there monitoring and reaching out immediately if action needs to be taken. That reassurance is not abstract—it changes how people feel about their work and their responsibilities.

The cooperation with CSIS has enabled his team to “sleep peacefully at night,” Kaare explains.

The Relationship: A Partner Who Delivers

For Norddjurs, the quality of the partnership with CSIS has been just as important as the technical capabilities.

“Our cooperation with CSIS is impeccable,” Kaare says. “We have received fantastic service and treatment all the way through this process.”

For Norddjurs, cybersecurity is ultimately about trust.

“It is quite clear that we must be able to show that we take care of our citizens’ data,” Kaare says. “We ensure that we have a setup where you can safely hand over data to us as a municipality.”

By combining its existing technical setup with CSIS’ 24/7 SOC monitoring and incident response capabilities, Norddjurs has moved from reactive to proactive — and gained a partner committed to responding to an evolving threat landscape.

“We have a partner who always delivers when we need it.”

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CSIS Security Group A/S is a leading European pure-play provider of tech-enabled cybersecurity and intelligence services. Operating 24/7, we deliver Managed Detection & Response, Incident Response, Security Consulting across all sectors, and provide a world-class threat intelligence capability through our SecAlliance brand. Accredited by organisations including CREST, we actively support global security initiatives to positively impact the cyber community.