By using NoPorts, KRYZ in California is better-protected from hackers and requires less hands-on time from their IT person
Challenge
KRYZ Mariposa Community Radio is a non-profit, independent station. They need to manage and maintain their equipment without the luxury of a big staff and big budget. A few years ago, the station’s network was thought to be hacked by unknown parties who used KRYZ’s frequency to broadcast their own programming—Scandinavian Death Metal 🤘. The station quickly realized that they needed to better protect their broadcasting equipment.
Some of their other (quieter) challenges included:
- Lots of expensive security equipment to purchase and manage
- Limited availability of their tech/security volunteer, Colin
- Mapping all the private IP addresses inside their network to a public IP address (NAT)
It was clear that their setup, which was following industry standards, was falling short. They needed something to protect them that didn’t require everyone to become IT experts.
When Colin suggested that they try NoPorts, the KRYZ team could see how it would not only protect them from hackers, it would make their setup simpler, and allow Colin to help them out without coming to the station or to the tower location.
Solution
As a result of adopting NoPorts, KRYZ is now able to run their devices without the devices having any open listening ports. Hackers scanning the network cannot find anything, so any network-based hacking is cut off at the pass.
They were able to set up NoPorts and go live within 15 minutes, and discontinue their VPN service and NAT hassles.
Recently, the station had a hardware malfunction and was knocked off the air. Colin was just about to go out of the country, so didn’t have time to fully set up the new hardware they needed. Because KRYZ was using NoPorts, Colin was able to drop the equipment at the station, and then when he reached his destination, he remotely logged in to the PC at the transmitter site and installed the software remotely. In the meantime, the station used an Azure virtual machine and NoPorts to keep the station up and running.
Let’s talk about how NoPorts can help your company replace its VPNs (even if you do have a big budget and lots of IT experts on hand!). Sign up for a demo today!
Disclosure
KRYZ is a community-run radio station in rural Mariposa, California, and relies on volunteers. Atsign’s co-founder and CTO, Colin Constable, was asked to help with the station’s security plan after the cyber attack, and now is one of those volunteers. He introduced them to the NoPorts tool.
