Implements KHIPU’s SOC to provide 24 x 7 x 365 Visibility and Protection against Cyber Threats.
Canterbury Christ Church University, in partnership with KHIPU, transforms and leverages existing security tools into a 24x7x365 Security Operations Centre (SOC) protected environment with sector-wide immediate response, remediation and proactive threat hunting capabilities.
// Challenges
Implementing A Zero-Trust Security Architecture.
As part of Canterbury Christ Church University’s digital transformation journey, one of the priority strategic objectives is for the institution to implement a zero-trust security architecture whilst preserving academic freedom – an approach which can be very complex and is a common challenge across the entire education sector.
Canterbury Christ Church has made significant investments in leading cyber security technologies as well as implementing improved processes and controls, however they recognise that due to the constantly changing attack landscape, that round the clock cyber threat monitoring, detection and response is needed more than ever.
To accelerate the University’s zero trust security strategy whilst continually improving the user experience, after an extensive review, the university selected KHIPU’s Cloud-Native Managed Detection and Response (CMDR) service to jointly implement a fully operational 24x7x365 Security Operations Centre to proactively protect the institution from cyber attacks.
Solution.
Due to previous experiences, before choosing a suitable service the University conducted an extensive proof of concept of KHIPU’s CMDR service. This was to ensure that the SOC service could meet all of the universities requirements and give them the confidence that it has sufficient scalability to ingest existing security tools and sources, provide 24x7x365 monitoring, alerting and response capabilities and give them access to always available SOC cyber security analysts.
The proof of concept was a huge success and the CMDR SOC service is now an integral part of Canterbury Christ Church University’s cyber security operations and processes.
A KHIPU Networks and Google Cloud collaboration to provide a community-driven approach for sector-wide cyber protection.
KHIPU’s Cloud-Native Managed Detection and Response (CMDR) service has been designed for organisations who wish to leverage investments by enhancing the capabilities of existing security tools and in-house teams, transforming their environments into a 24x7x365 SOC with continual monitoring, detection and prevention of cyber threats.
“Building a cyber security service that meets the needs of HE and FE institutions takes time. In fact, it’s taken KHIPU over two years to develop and deliver a mature SOC that has the expertise, technology and processes to protect institutions from the ever-changing cyber threat landscape. We are very pleased that Canterbury Christ Church University has recognised this and selected KHIPU as its SOC partner”
Guy Jermany
CIO, KHIPU Networks
KHIPU’s Cloud-Native Managed Detection and Response SOC (CMDR) service is underpinned by Google Cloud’s.
Chronicle Security Operations. With Chronicle, KHIPU’s SOC teams have a holistic view of each customer’s threat environment, and can detect and investigate threats with Google speed, scale and intelligence’. In addition, leveraging AI and automation tools powered by Palo Alto Networks XSOAR, KHIPU’s SOC teams provided immediate incident response, remediation and prevention capabilities.
“We’ve been delighted to partner with KHIPU Networks as they have built out Chronicle as the backbone to their CMDR service, utilising their expertise to ensure a service to meet the unique challenges of the education sector and now protecting Canterbury Christ Church University. We look forward to this continuing as they grow and build their offerings to this important sector.”
Cristina Pitarch, Managing Director,
EMEA Security Sales, Google Cloud
Outcome.
KHIPU’s Cloud-Native Managed Detection and Response service co-exists with Canterbury Christ Church’s environment, providing complete visibility, response and protection into threat activity. The service is providing the following key outcomes to the institution:
Immediate identification, protection and prevention
Integrating the capabilities of automation playbooks with KHIPU’s SOC teams, working in partnership with Canterbury Christ Church, accurate decisions can be made based upon agreed rules, processes and actions. This ensures that the appropriate response, communication and relevant remediation takes place immediately to incidents such as ransomware and phishing.
Transform and leverage existing security tools into a fully SOC operated environment
CCCU have made significant investments in a range of technologies. By integrating them into the SOC environment leverages and enhances their capabilities giving them campus-wide coverage, analytics and protection. The university is currently ingesting mission critical sources including Active Directory, Palo Alto Networks Next Generation Firewalls, Aruba Networks Clearpass and WiFi, Rubrik Back Up and Recovery Management, Infoblox DDI, Office365, Sophos AV with plans for more.
Complete visibility: A single holistic view.
With a range of customisable dashboards available including risk, context aware detections, data ingestion and health, Indicator of Compromise (IOC) matches and more, CCCU can now visualise the current threat status of their environment being monitored by the SOC. With a minimum of one year hot state retention, the university and the SOC has access to both real-time and historic data for investigation and compliance purposes.
Community-Driven Protection
As the SOC gains insights from all customers using the service and takes intelligence feeds from a range of cyber security sources, if a threat is detected such as a critical zero-day threat, an executable used in an attack or an exploited vulnerability, a number of responses can be executed such as alerting, sharing of IOC’s and a range of remediation actions. This community-driven approach where the ‘safety in numbers’ strategy brings customers together as the overall common goal is to continually improve the sector’s cyber security posture, security operations and efficiencies.
“A big challenge for us was to find a suitable cyber security service that gave us the confidence that we are being monitored, alerted and protected 24x7x365 – especially out of hours where we could find ourselves exposed. It took us a long time to find a SOC service which was not disruptive in order to operate, had been designed for the education sector and one that we proved worked effectively in our environment. We are very pleased to have partnered with KHIPU on our SOC journey.”
Andy Powell,
Deputy Director, Chief Technology Officer
Canterbury Christ Church University