Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 46 | Page 60

CASE STUDY
Can you tell us about your role at the university and what this looks like day-to-day ?
My role has changed significantly over the course of the pandemic and has been thrust into the spotlight , increasingly focusing on a transformational role as opposed to the traditional technology role . It involves both driving the university ’ s Digital Transformation and building a stable and secure IT environment to support hybrid teaching , learning and research . full visibility of our assets and closing hundreds of thousands of endpoint vulnerabilities .
Due to the visibility Tanium provided us with , we were able to identify and fix thousands of missing patches and remediate issues and threats in minutes . It has also brought our team closer as our security and operations team work more closely together .
What challenges were you looking to address ahead of the implementation ?
I ’ ve also been more engaged in boardroom conversations about the impact of the pandemic and Digital Transformation , highlighting the changes and what this means for our students and staff .
Why did you decide to work with Tanium on this occasion ?
Over the course of the pandemic , many educational institutions have had to change their approach in response to the changing threat landscape .
For example , we ’ re seeing higher educational institutions targeted more regularly by nation state sponsored attackers as well as ransomware gangs .
After conducting a security assessment , we realised the university had a lack of visibility of our assets and we were unable to make sure that everything was secure and up to date . We brought in Tanium to provide a safe and secure environment – giving us
As I alluded to earlier , the pandemic created a host of new security challenges that we needed to respond to . Not least , we had to adjust teaching and learning systems in a matter of weeks in order to accommodate remote learning .
We had over 5,500 endpoint devices which we needed to secure across our estate , in an environment where our IT infrastructure was large and siloed . We lacked the tools needed to spot attacks and patch vulnerabilities quickly – and there was therefore a concern that if the university was attacked , we wouldn ’ t be able to respond fast enough to prevent harm .
How much of a target is the education sector when it comes to cyberattacks ?
The higher education sector has long been an attractive target for cybercriminals , but the sector ’ s vulnerability has significantly increased over the last 18 months .
60 INTELLIGENTCIO EUROPE www . intelligentcio . com