How Con Edison Powers Up New York

Providing electricity, natural gas and steam for more than 10 million New Yorkers is a big job. So is managing tens of thousands of digital endpoints. Both are among the duties of Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, a utility known locally as Con Ed.

If any of Con Edison’s systems, whether related to energy production or in IT, were to fail, much of the city’s day-to-day operations would be brought to a halt. Homes, businesses, hospitals, subways, traffic lights and more in New York City and nearby Westchester County all rely on Con Edison power to keep them running.

However, Con Edison’s IT department had an issue. “We had instances of clients and agents being broken and not reporting in,” recalls information security systems specialist Frank Santoro. “That was a concern. If your clients aren’t reporting in, you’re not getting the data you need.”

Many endpoints, one platform

To address the issue, the utility’s enterprise architecture group licensed Tanium in 2016. Quickly, Con Ed knew where their other endpoint tools were deployed, as well as when they were running properly. What’s more, the utility could gather this information from Tanium’s single platform.

It didn’t take long for Con Edison to realize Tanium could be used for other projects, too. One such project involves detecting endpoint hashes used by antivirus software to determine whether a file is infected. “That was a win for us,” Santoro says.

Another way Con Edison uses Tanium is to confirm whether digital endpoints are fully patched. If Tanium determines that an endpoint is out of compliance, it can also help the utility take action to upload the missing patch.

‘Massive ecosystem’

Other groups within Con Edison realized they could use Tanium, as well. One, the forensics group, now uses Tanium to capture information used for data analysis.

“Though we started out small with our Tanium use cases, over time, we’ve purchased more modules and expanded the number of groups utilizing it,” Santoro says. “Tanium’s a massive ecosystem that offers valuable capabilities.”

Now, when over 10 million New Yorkers switch on the lights, they can thank not only Con Edison, but Tanium too.

Learn more: Read the full Con Edison case study to learn how this utility keeps New York City running with the power of Tanium.