THE CHALLENGE: FUTURE-PROOFING AGAINST INCREASED CYBERCRIME IN THE EDUCATION SECTOR
Greater Manchester Education Trust is a secondary education provider made up of four schools in and around the Manchester area.
Due to the recent rise in cyber attacks in the education sector, the Trust approached Pentesec, seeking to increase the resilience of its cyber estate and future-proof against potential threats. In particular, the Trust was interested in finding new ways to efficiently investigate alerts from existing tools, and implement the necessary level of visibility across their cyber estate.
OUR APPROACH: A POWERFUL MIX OF PRE-BUILT AND BESPOKE SOLUTIONS
To offer full visibility of the Trust’s cyber environment, Pentesec proposed two Rapid7-powered managed services: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), and Vulnerability Management (VM).
These pre-built solutions quickly and efficiently gave additional assurance, increasing visibility and giving the IT team extra time to focus on internal development. However, the Trust also wished to implement a system to filter alerts and present them in an intelligent way to allow the IT team to prioritise them.
To do this, we implemented custom alerting to ensure event management could be delegated to the Pentesec team, while the Trust’s IT team can focus on other value-adding tasks.
THE RESULTS: A SAFE CYBER ENVIRONMENT FOR STUDENTS AND STAFF
Pentesec’s SIEM and VM managed services provide the Trust with a crystal clear picture of what is happening within their environment.
Enabling their IT staff to focus on other areas of development, with the peace of mind that a state-of-the-art solution is significantly reducing cyber threats and our team of experienced professionals are actively monitoring their cyber environment 24/7.
The Trust also benefits from improved cyber security knowledge and a stronger security posture. Overall, the board feels more confident in its ability to respond to the increased levels of cybercrime that are threatening the education sector – providing a safe and protected cyber environment for students and staff alike.
