Visibility as a “Silver Bullet”: Leveraging a Robust Security Posture to Enable Digital Transformation

The University of Houston System (UHS) is the region’s largest provider of comprehensive university services from baccalaureate to doctorate and serves more than 72,000 students and 10,000 faculty and staff across multiple campuses. With an annual budget that exceeds $1.7 billion and produces a $6 billion-plus economic impact on the greater Houston area each year, each university campus is in many ways a small city and an appealing target for attackers. Recognizing the challenge protecting multiple institutions of differing complexities, the University of Houston System deployed a robust, people-centric security architecture across all campuses in the UH System, transforming not only the protection of UHS’s highest threat vector (email) but also providing UHS with visibility into security issues across all of the campuses. This has been especially impactful protecting students from attacks like job-scam emails, while also protecting UHS executives from imposter scams, a growing challenge faced by many academic institutions. This presentation will focus on how UHS identified its primary threat vectors, deployed a solution that provided the necessary safeguards, and how that has enabled UHS’s transformational journey.