The way that we see the problem is that universities need to establish a baseline for IT security health, and if they’re ready to take that step toward it and make meaningful progress, coupled with executive leadership support and talented staff, such as USF Splunk expert Tim Ip to manage the product, then Splunk can be the most favorable tool you can get.
University of San Francisco Promotes Efficiency, Increases Transparency With Splunk Cloud SIEM
Founded in 1855, the University of San Francisco (USF) is a Jesuit university located in the heart of San Francisco.
Like other universities, USF faces many challenges—from making payroll on time to maintaining accreditation and ensuring IT and security systems are in place to educate 10,000 students and support 2,500 faculty and staff. After evaluating several options, USF invested in Splunk Cloud as its new security information and event management (SIEM) solution. Since deploying Splunk Cloud, USF has seen benefits including:
- Improved security posture and ensured payment card industry (PCI) compliance
- Reduced phishing investigations from days to minutes
- Promoted transparency among university executives and staff
Challenges
- Needed to maintain high standards and keep the university’s excellent reputation intact
- Wanted to enhance security posture and reduce vulnerabilities within systems
- Needed a baseline to establish health of information security
- Tasked with protecting PII data and ensuring PCI compliance
- Lacked security operations visibility among university staff and executives
- Recruitment and retention of talented InfoSec professional staff
Business Impact
- Implemented SIEM solution to create a more secure online environment and further safeguard university reputation
- Transformed data into valuable insights to enhance security posture
- Established baseline to monitor and improve health of information security
- Ensured PCI compliance by creating and sending automated alerts for faculty and staff to reset their passwords
- Protected PII data
- Provided a time-saving solution that promotes transparency across the university and among executives
- Provided a platform to increase engagement and meaning behind the work performed by InfoSec professional staff
Why Splunk
Within USF’s Information Technology Department, the Information Security and Compliance (ISC) group is tasked with the enormous challenge of providing security strategy, assessment and risk consultation as well as compliance monitoring and auditing across the university. Previously, ISC staff were concerned about the university’s security posture and its ability to protect against and prevent phishing attempts and security breaches. USF recognizes the need to protect valuable personally identifiable information (PII), such as Social Security numbers and credit card data.
Nick Recchia, ISC director and information security officer, explains that as the university underwent a technology transformation, the group sought a SIEM solution that would enable the department to be more proactive in preventing security breaches. Additionally, USF required a solution that could ensure PCI requirements were met, and that would promote security operations transparency among university executives and staff.
“We evaluated a handful of SIEM solutions and created a matrix to compare them against one another. There were several similar features and opportunities among them, but there were also big differences,” Recchia explains. “Splunk’s turnkey cloud offering and hybrid option makes it magnitudes better than any of the others.”
