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Colleges and Universities Turn to
ArcSight to Stay Ahead of Today’s
Security Threats
Kent State
University, University of Maryland
University College, University of
Tennessee and the University at
Buffalo Deploy ArcSight to Protect
Against Attacks and Comply with
Regulatory Requirements
CUPERTINO, Calif. –
April 17, 2006 – ArcSight, Inc., a
global leader in Enterprise Security
Management (ESM) software, announced
the growing momentum of its ESM
solution within the higher education
sector. The University at Buffalo,
Kent State University, University of
Maryland University College and the
University of Tennessee are among a
growing number of academic
institutions using ArcSight ESM to
stay ahead of hackers, internal
threats and comply with federal
regulations.
"Enterprise security
management software is gaining steam
in the higher education market because
of its ability to hone in on true
security threats and make compliance
reporting easier," said Wes Young,
network security analyst, University
at Buffalo. "It expands the capacity
of typically small security staffs to
address the unique security challenges
faced by colleges and universities."
Academic institutions
are faced with a unique set of
security challenges due to their open
and collaborative nature which
provides the perfect breeding ground
for hackers to test malicious code and
store illegal wares. They also have
less control of their networks due to
potentially unsecure student and
faculty computers constantly accessing
their networks. In addition, many are
subject to compliance with regulations
such as HIPAA and the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and with
standards such as the new PCI
standard. To address these challenges,
a growing number of academic
institutions are deploying ESM
software from ArcSight.
The University of
Tennessee
Security is of prime importance to
the University of Tennessee because of
its close research ties with the
Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge
National Laboratory (ORNL) and the
University’s high bandwidth, which is
necessary to support its 28,000
students and 8,000 faculty and staff,
but also represents a gold mine for
hackers. The University is constantly
under attack from the latest viruses,
worms and infected computers logging
on to its networks, which was focusing
its small staff on reactively
investigating security issues.
"We decided to invest
in security information management
technology to gain an expert system to
collect, analyze and respond to
security issues," said James Perry, IT
security team lead, University of
Tennessee. "We selected ArcSight ESM
following a pilot test where it not
only proved superior in covering our
basic correlation needs, but could
dramatically reduce the amount of
false positives consuming much of the
security team’s time through its built
in intelligence capabilities. We have
now turned a corner where the security
team is only alerted to important
security events and much of the
necessary escalation is automated. For
example, we can identify an infected
machine and feed the information to a
system to automatically disable the
user."
The University of
Maryland University College
UMUC faces similar challenges. It
serves 140,000 students including a
military population overseas and
civilians in the U.S. in a primarily
online distance learning environment.
Therefore, the IT security team is
tasked with ensuring the uptime of the
infrastructure responsible for the
e-learning environment. Like the
University of Tennessee, UMUC also has
a small security staff which was
buried in manually reviewing thousands
of security logs. It decided to
purchase a security information
management solution in order to
alleviate some of this burden and
re-focus the team on core network
design and operations tasks to support
the University’s growth and expansion.
"Immediately upon
installing ArcSight ESM for a pilot
test we not only saw the potential of
having a correlation engine help us
focus on the most pressing security
issues, but we gained visibility into
issues we didn’t even know existed
such as high utilization rates which
point to suspicious network activity,"
said Alex Gales, Internetwork
engineering manager, UMUC.
"Higher education
networks are distinctly different from
traditional enterprises," said Steve
Sommer, senior vice president of
marketing and business development,
ArcSight. "In fact, they lead the way
in areas such as mitigating internal
threats by having to cope with the
oftentimes unknown security status of
student and staff computers and
therefore having to move their
perimeter security closer to sensitive
information. We are pleased to align
with these forward-thinking
organizations and helping them support
and protect these learning
institutions."
About ArcSight
ArcSight, a leader in Enterprise
Security Management (ESM), provides
real-time threat management and
compliance reporting yielding
actionable insights into security
data. By comprehensively collecting,
analyzing and managing security data,
ArcSight ESM enables enterprises,
government organizations and managed
security service providers to
centrally manage information risk more
efficiently. ArcSight's customer base
includes leading global companies
across many verticals--and more than
20 U.S. federal agencies.
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Contact Information:
Erin Flanigan
Horn Group for ArcSight
415-905-4005
eflanigan@horngroup.com
For more information on ArcSight
news, please contact: pr@arcsight.com
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