Can you rely on your data center access security?

Educational organizations are a top target for cyberattacks. It is the third most common area of focus for hackers and cybercriminals, behind financial and health care institutions. EDUCAUSE named information security as the top IT issue of the year for the fourth year in a row for schools.

• Data breach leading to theft or compromise of personally identifying information (PII)
• Network-wide ransomware attack
• Financial theft from unauthorized access

The problem is getting worse. The number of lost, stolen or compromised student data records went up 164% in the first six months of 2017 compared to the last half of 2016, Campus Technology reports. Schools struggle with meeting Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) by keeping all endpoints up-to-date with host-checker.

Education institutions have offered attackers little resistance to identity and financial theft. At the same time, organizations are embracing new digital learning initiatives, including personalized learning, learning management systems, virtual classrooms, mobile learning, augmented/virtual reality, further use of cloud resources and have to cater to students who are always on the leading edge of new—and often non-secure—computer resources.

Educational organizations need to offer broad access, accommodate an ever-widening variety of devices and deal with numerous networks, highly distributed computing environments, new apps and various cloud-based assets. Key to such diverse challenges is the ability to have secure access with consistent  and appropriate security policies across all users, devices, applications, networks and locations.

Protect your data center in a zero-trust world

Pulse Secure Provides Educational Organizations with Visibility and Secure Access

Pulse Secure provides a comprehensive way for schools and educational organizations to secure their environments while accommodating constantly changing dynamics as well as pursuing new digital learning initiatives. Our security framework controls access to the central office network, individual schools and on-prem or cloud-data centers based on based on user, role, device, location, time, network and application, as well as endpoint security state. It extends limited internal visibility to full visibility across all users, locations, networks and devices and enables consistent security policies across constantly evolving infrastructure while eliminating blind spots and weak links in the potential attack surface.

Visibility of What’s on the Network

Educational organizations can use Pulse Profiler to automatically detect and continuously profile managed and agentless devices on various networks and resources.  With a single view of all devices connecting to all environments, the security administrator can monitor devices for profile changes, track device inventory for asset management and gather connectivity information for troubleshooting.  Pulse Profiler provided visibility, with threat reduction by Pulse Policy Secure, ensures that companies are fully protected from malware attacks and detected threats are rapidly isolated and mitigated.

Granular Security Policies for any Use Case

Educational organizations can implement a policy-driven “comply-to-connect” strategy that controls access to resources and services, based on device type and health, domain, locations, resources, users and groups. Pulse Policy Secure NAC strengthens network security posture with capabilities that include endpoint vulnerability assessments, device posture checks and alert integration with next generation firewalls for speedy mitigation.

Secure Access Regardless of Location, Device or User

Employees and students can use the Pulse Client to securely access necessary resources remotely via the Pulse Connect Secure VPN, or locally via the school’s WiFi network.  Pulse Policy Secure authenticates employees and students locally based on their role and desired resource, automatically provisioning firewalls without manual intervention to provide remote access and immediately access proper resources.