CASE STUDY
Tanium , the provider of endpoint management and security built for the world ’ s most demanding IT environments , recently announced that the University of Salford has used the Tanium Platform to strengthen its defence against a surge of cyberattacks targeting the education sector . but it needed to find a better way of gaining visibility and control over the devices connecting remotely to its network ( endpoints ). This is important because vulnerable endpoints offer attackers a much easier route into the IT environment and increase the chance of a damaging breach occurring .
Tanium worked with the university to help it overcome several challenges that have emerged over the last year . It faced a rise in the number of cybercrime threats , such as ransomware , as well as nation state attacks launched in an attempt to steal COVID-19 research data .
These threats applied pressure to the University of Salford ’ s IT infrastructure which consists of a complex blend of on-premise and cloud systems – all supporting the operations of four different schools .
The environment was based on a legacy IT architecture which was not prepared for the complications caused by COVID-19 . The pandemic forced the university to provide mass remote learning ,
Tanium provided the required visibility and control , minimising the university ’ s fundamental risk and strengthening its incident response capabilities .
The Tanium Platform was used to discover previously undetected endpoints hidden in the network , many of which were missing critical patches and software updates . This reduced the number of missing critical patches by more than 99 %, from 38,000 to 238 . Tanium also helped the university reduce the time it takes to carry out software patches by 66 %, with near-perfect coverage .
We caught up with Mark Wantling , CIO , University of Salford , to hear more about the implementation and its benefits , and what the future holds for the university .
ONE ACTIVITY I CONDUCTED
TO ENGAGE THE UNIVERSITY ’ S
BOARD OF DIRECTORS WAS
TO TAKE THEM ON A QUICK
TOUR OF THE DARK WEB .
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