Education

Safeguarding digital campus learning

Elon University, a nationally recognized leader in hands-on education, strives to offer an environment that excels in teaching and learning. “With roughly 7000 students, 3000 staff and faculty, 200 buildings, and a residential campus, the university is akin to a small city,” remarks Robert Readling, Enterprise Network Architect at Elon University.

Elon University’s network has roughly 1300 Cisco wireless access points and 600 switches. The staff and faculty use university-issued phones, laptops, and other devices, which are managed by IT and secured with policies.

“Our real challenge, however, is securing the digital footprint of our students,” says Readling.

On a given day, the students typically connect five to ten unmanaged devices to the wireless network. Residential students can connect their devices wirelessly in dorm rooms. Readling adds, “This adds uncertainties to our security environment. We must be vigilant to protect everyone from everyone else and from external threats round-the-clock.”

“Network uptime is our top key performance indicator (KPI). We regularly evaluate if there has been any downtime or loss of data,” says Readling.

Integrating security for seamless protection

Elon University has been using a comprehensive suite of Cisco security products to protect its campus infrastructure, including Cisco Secure Endpoint, Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics, Cisco Secure Client, Cisco Umbrella, and Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE). “We also have FMC [Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center] managing two Cisco Secure Firewalls configured in high availability mode,” Readling explains. “The Cisco products enable us to implement and monitor policies to protect our networks.”

Initially, analysts faced challenges correlating security data across multiple screens. The introduction of Cisco SecureX improved integration, but the transition to Cisco Extended Detection and Response (XDR) marked a significant advancement. “I love the fact that all of my Cisco security products are integrated into XDR. And the dashboard lets me scroll down and see just about anything I need to see,” says Readling.

Cisco XDR provides Elon’s security team with a comprehensive view of attacks along with deeper insights and visibility into the network via integrations across the Cisco security products and third-party tools. Readling is excited about the integration between Splunk, their Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tool, and Cisco XDR.

The tight integration of telemetry data into a single dashboard dramatically improved efficiency. “Before Cisco XDR, we used to be busy combing the logs. That was very time-consuming,” says Readling. “Cisco XDR enabled us to gather all that information in some human-readable format, making that process more efficient.”

Elon University uses Cisco XDR’s AI-driven engines to normalize and correlate the massive volume of telemetry data from various data sources. “Thankfully, most of it gets stumped on by the automation,” says Readling. “You see correlation patterns—and the best thing is you can automate responses like blocking an unsafe URL. That’s a huge help in threat investigation and incident response.”

Improved operational efficiency

Cisco XDR created new opportunities for enhanced security operations at Elon University. Managing thousands of endpoints can be daunting, especially at the start of a school year. “Cisco XDR allows me to simply check a couple of boxes to specify the secure client package we need for our network. It then builds the package and our endpoint engineer deploys it across devices,” explains Readling. This streamlined process simplifies and acerates endpoint security.

Cisco XDR’s playbooks enable Elon University to automate the investigations by establishing rules that reduce the time from detection to response. “Cisco XDR correlates all the data in one place, giving me a comprehensive view of incidents,” Readling adds. “I can stop any threat in its tracks, whether a bad actor hitting our firewalls or a malicious program, with just a few clicks. I can also define custom rules to take appropriate actions and send me an alert when the incident happens.”

Cisco XDR also enables better and faster response to threats. “With security, the key is being quick in stopping a threat,” says Readling. “Our analysts no longer must sift through data while a threat continues to progress. If, say, a malware threat shows up, we can right-click on it and define a policy that will be enforced right away. That’s just cool.”

Readling concludes by highlighting how Cisco XDR simplified security management at Elon University through intelligent integration and automation. “With Cisco XDR’s integrations with Umbrella and Secure Cloud, if you see something you don’t like, you can right-click it and tell it to add it to the ‘naughty list,’ preventing any further access—whether that’s a malware threat or blocking a suspicious domain.”