As a financial institution, Central National Bank of Waco is an attractive target for cyberattacks — it surpassed $1 billion USD in assets in 2021. The community bank is owned by eight families who serve on the board of directors and has four locations in central Texas. With over 15,000 customers and 100 employees, it also is a commercial bank serving small-to-medium-sized businesses. In addition, as a national bank, Central National Bank is heavily regulated and audited.

Rusty Haferkamp is chief information security officer (CISO) at Central National Bank of Waco. No stranger to cybersecurity, he is laser-focused on protecting customers’ assets. Overall, the bank was doing a good job in this area, but Haferkamp knew more could be accomplished.

CrowdStrike Elevates Security by Providing “Emergency Room” Service

A couple of years ago, Haferkamp contacted CrowdStrike after an incident occurred in the middle of a forensics audit of the bank’s security system. Luckily it did not require any mitigation, but it was enough for the CISO to step in. To close the gap, Central National Bank of Waco partnered with CrowdStrike for the deployment of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete™ managed detection and response (MDR) throughout the organization.

This cloud-based service represented an elevation in cybersecurity for Central National Bank of Waco.

Small Businesses — and Cybersecurity — Have Evolved

Haferkamp once owned a small computer consulting business. Those years of experience, coupled with the knowledge gained in his current position, provided the skillset to recognize the need for elevated security. “We are in a new phase of technology,” he said. “Small businesses used to have an IT person on staff who fixed any problems, or perhaps a generalist who knew how to update the system. However, that person was not trained to replace a firewall or SQL server. They had an antivirus agent running, and they hoped everything worked out because they did not have reporting or logging capability.”

However, as the frequency of cyberattacks has surged, small businesses — including banks — have needed to adapt and increase spending on cybersecurity tools to protect customers’ assets. “We have progressed a lot when it comes to being proactive instead of reactive, but we can’t do it overnight,” he explained. “There is employee training and customer training, for example.” And they could not do it alone.

Once Central National Bank of Waco started using CrowdStrike, Haferkamp’s team began seeing the alerting and reporting features and everything else CrowdStrike was doing. “It was such a relief,” he said. “I am much more comfortable with my network now. If we have an incident, I am confident that we will not have a problem thanks to CrowdStrike.”

“CrowdStrike gives me the ability to go home and relax. Any time we have an alarm, the hair on the back of my neck rises if I see failed authentication attempts in our Active Directory. However, with CrowdStrike I can tell very quickly what is going on. The process tree in the MDR portal delivers all the information within a matter of seconds, instead of someone here spending a couple of days working on it. With the automatic remediation it delivers, I don’t have to worry that someone has accessed our systems.”

Close Working Relationship with CrowdStrike Provides Peace of Mind

Haferkamp wants to be able to call the bank’s cybersecurity resource and feel confident he’s talking to someone who is educated and knowledgeable about his environment and about cybersecurity in general. He has that level of confidence with CrowdStrike, he said. “Every time we’ve had an incident — like when somebody tries to plug in a USB drive — I receive an email from one of our dedicated CrowdStrike support team members, warning, ‘Hey, check your portal, this does not look like it’s caused an issue, but please check it.’”

“CrowdStrike performs as if I have someone onsite 24/7 monitoring our assets all the time, even at three o’clock in the morning,” he continued. “We cannot work every three-day weekend to patch or update servers. I’ve seen trends where hackers will strike during holidays or after hours. CrowdStrike makes me feel a lot more comfortable about going fishing.”