Customer Problem / Business Objective
Universities have a long tradition of open learning and collaboration, where information is shared freely among students and researchers. In fact, universities played a key role in growing the internet from its early military roots to a global communication platform. Unfortunately, in today’s world, cyber criminals have become a regular part of online life. The tradition of open sharing is under threat by cyber attacks, and institutions of higher learning need to find effective ways to protect themselves.
Institutes of higher learning have many information technology needs, which can be increasingly hard to manage to deter cyber attacks. This includes more connected department, staff and student communications that are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Universities must also protect their email system, which is a top threat for infecting systems with malware.
This threat is not theoretical. The University of California San Francisco paid $1.1 million to regain access to research data related to a coronavirus vaccine.
In June 2021, a cyber attack forced University of Massachusetts Lowell to shut down totally for almost a week. At Lincoln College in Illinois, a cyber attack crippled the institution causing it to shut down student recruitment, retention and fundraising operations for more than three months. These ransomware situations have become so serious that the FBI issued a FLASH warning specifically directed toward educational institutions.
Implementation
Universities are moving tremendous amounts of data across the internet and to the cloud. Conceal’s solutions address the privacy and security needs of academic institutions offering additional security, privacy, performance and significant cost reductions. This is especially important to universities handling the transmission of high-level intellectual property whether within a university research department or between outside entities.
Students and faculty are also at risk from threats like malware and ransomware from their everyday web-based activities. Deploying ConcealBrowse provides ransomware protection by securing email and browsing sessions by proactively detecting unknown or malicious URLs, determining the best way to defend against it, then isolating the network from web-borne threats.
University research teams often need to conduct sensitive research and may want to apply a level of managed attribution that hides their digital trail. Conceal’s solutions can provide that privacy. ConcealSearch lets your users be in control of their web-based activity and securely conduct discreet research, web-scraping, due diligence and online investigations. It gives your university the power of browser policy controls to secure and protect online activity for your end-users.
ConcealCloud allows an institution to maintain critical assets in the commercial cloud while concealing the digital and billing footprint of the cloud deployment. ConcealCloud allows for deterministic routing of data in the commercial cloud to comply with GDPR regulations. It provides next generation cybersecurity by leveraging existing, cost-effective, internet broadband connectivity to communication between the enterprise, the internet and the cloud while delivering increased performance, security and resiliency within the network.
Value Add / Solution
- Proactive approach to cybersecurity.
- Secure environment that leverages Zero Trust networking principles for access.
- Complete misattribution and privacy for personnel operating on the internet.
- No reported instances of malware or compromise of machines/networks utilizing the product.
- The ability to utilize multiple desktop tools and the command line including the Tor Browser for Dark Web access.
- Dedicated egress node enables the customer to access previously restricted websites and makes it significantly less difficult to maintain online personas.
- Rapid deployment and stand up of users (~1 day).
