Education IT Reporter

Tulane University works with Digital Defense, Inc. to increase the security of the data and personal information of more than 16,000 students, faculty and staff. Tulane was struggling with reports that provided large amounts of static and extraneous data, which then had to be distilled into something actionable.

“In higher education, we have the unique challenge of walking a very fine line between providing a secure environment for our students, faculty and staff, while being careful not to be the internet police and block valuable research,” said Hunter Ely, assistant vice president, information security and policy officer at Tulane University.

The Tulane security team discovered a customizable vulnerability scanning and management tool able to deliver reports that provide actionable intelligence, allowing the team to move quickly on remediation issues and help protect the sensitive data of students, faculty and staff.

“Digital Defense helps us identify and remediate critical issues with clear and concise reports supported by a team of knowledgeable experts,” said Mark Liggett, senior security analyst at Tulane University.

Thanks to a vulnerability scanning technology (Frontline VM) Tulane experiences fewer false positives, which saves time, and Frontline VM does not take weeks of training to get new people up and running. This means more members of the security team can use it and have role-based access to the data.

“The data from Frontline VM is distinct without having to go into a lengthy description, and the critical issues are very clear – the big things do not get lost in the shuffle,” said Liggett.

“We work hard to ensure our clients are receiving the data they need to make their environments secure, and also provide security savvy support to assist in rapidly remediating security vulnerabilities that our solutions uncover,” said Larry Hurtado, CEO of DDI. “We understand that higher education institutions like Tulane face a unique set of challenges, and we work hard to support them in keeping the information in their community protected.”

Having a proven scanning technology in place has become even more valuable for Tulane when thinking about the issue of unknown endpoints (hosts) faced by institutions of higher education. In any network, assets don’t always stay in place.

Network host correlation tracks and reconciles assets and their data, even when their IP addresses change, providing unparalleled vulnerability management. With so many different and changing endpoints on their network, Tulane can use the vulnerability management solution to unravel any problems.

“We are careful not to become the internet police. There’s a lot of back and forth with striking the right user balance with wide open access offered in a safe manner. This helps us remediate issues and protect our students, faculty and staff more quickly,” Ely said.

“We also like that, with Frontline VM, after my team fixes an issue, we can immediately and simply re-scan to find out almost in real-time if the fix effectively remediated the problem,” Liggett said.