The problem
This major university served tens of thousands of students and was consistently ranked near the top of multiple independent surveys. Their large IT department was the heart of technology services for students, faculty, and staff doing everything from world-renowned research to career placement and more. But some of the most-utilised applications were outdated and running on legacy Windows servers.
The entire system was one giant security risk. The IT team had launched an effort to update applications and upgrade the massive infrastructure. But the project was moving slowly, and the team knew their system was a sitting duck, ripe for attacks.
They needed to find a way to protect the aging apps and infrastructure, and the data they held, while continuing work on the upgrade. Their internal team couldn’t focus on both efforts. Then, a sudden deluge of attempted security breaches served as a very loud alarm, and the team decided to call in an expert. RedShield sped to the scene.
The solution
RedShield recommended redirecting inbound university web traffic through RedShield’s own proxy servers, which would be housed in the university’s datacentre. With this buffer in place, RedShield could detect and address any type of attack traffic before it even came near the university system, protecting it from outside threats of any kind.
The results
With the RedShield solution in place, the university’s legacy systems were fully protected, and their IT team could proceed with their modernisation efforts without diverting their attention to concerns about exposed data or looming attacks. Even more, RedShield managed a secure publishing process for the updated apps, scanning for and solving any vulnerabilities in the new code immediately. It was an innovative, effective solution that sent RedShield straight to the head of the class.
Today, RedShield continues to stand guard:
- Monitoring the university’s tools and systems 24/7
- Auditing the application defences weekly
- Responding to any customer queries or application updates
- Delivering monthly analyst reports
“Continuing to publish applications that can’t be patched and already have security issues, while having 100% confidence more are coming, was unacceptable. But replatforming everything just takes time. RedShield bought us the time we needed.”
—University IT Executive
