CUSTOMER CASE STUDY DURHAM UNIVERSITY

Durham University makes asimple and beneficial switchfrom Sophos Enterprise
Console to cloud-based
Sophos Central
Ranked fifth in the Guardian University Guide (2020) and sixth in The Complete
University Guide (2020), Durham University offers over 200 undergraduate
courses and 100 taught postgraduate courses, as well as many research
degrees. With a total student population of around 19,000 and close to 4,300
staff members, the University is run from Durham’s distinctive residential andeducational communities.

CUSTOMER-AT-A-GLANCE
Durham UniversityIndustry
Higher Education

Number of Users
8,000

Sophos Solutions
Sophos Central
Sophos Customer
Since 2013

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY DURHAM UNIVERSITY

Happy with the on-premises Sophos Enterprise
Console, yet keen to extend its security provision further,
Durham University transitioned to cloud-based Sophos
Central in late 2018. Already Sophos advocates, the100-member strong IT team at the university choseto continue working with Sophos for its simple but
effective functionality and the company’s tried andtested security protections.

Business challenges
With around 19,000 students and over 4,000 membersof staff, keeping everyone at Durham University safe
from cybercrime can be a real challenge. The majorityof staff and students connect at least one device to theUniversity network and there is significant BYOD usage,
with BYOD, phishing, and spoofing threats targeted at
University members of significant concern.
Keeping staff and student data protected and university
systems and services available is critical to theoperation of university business.
“We have used Sophos for a number of years. It has
proven effective at Durham, adding significant value toour security operations. The core feature set meets ourcurrent requirements, and with Sophos Central there
is a clear and simple modular path to supplement ourprotections, with enhanced features in response toemerging threats. The Sophos Higher Education support
team has always dealt quickly and effectively with ourrequests and support requirements.”
Gary Foster, senior manager – Cyber Security, Durham
University

The technical solution
Gary Foster, the university’s senior manager ofCyber Security, and his team worked on the project
to upgrade to Sophos Central, procured throughSophos partner Phoenix Software. One of his mainpriorities was to reduce manual processes throughincreased automation to reduce threat response times
and minimise repetitive manual tasks. He was alsointerested in the new feature which allowed policies tofollow users, regardless of the devices they have.

Business benefits
Implementation of Sophos Central has been a smoothprocess and the transition has been moving at a steadypace, in line with the university’s requirements. Garyparticularly enjoys using the interface in Sophos Central
and likes the uncluttered dashboard, new API, andalerts. He sees the main benefits of Sophos Central as
being:

Time savings
The IT team are able to work on other high-priority tasks
because Sophos Central and its API allows for more jobs
to be automated.

The ability to roll out new features
Gary is interested in switching on additional features
within Sophos Central in the future. When he chooses todo so, rolling out the new functionality will be automaticand easy to manage.

‘We are alreadymaking timesavings
with Sophos
Central and I
know we willsave evenmore time inthe future.’
Gary Foster
Senior Manager – Cyber Security,
Durham University

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY DURHAM UNIVERSITY

Layered protection
Sophos Central provides the university with layered
protection in addition to Microsoft Office 365 and thirdparty firewalls, keeping staff, students, professional
support teams, devices, and servers safe from onlinethreats.

Effective security for GDPR compliance“I am comfortable that we have improved threatprotection over Sophos Enterprise Console. Sophos
Central prevents users from visiting websites thatcould harbour online threats,” he notes.

Gary summarises: “By implementing Sophos
Central we have seen improvements to how oursecurity operations function works. We really likethe new interface – more of what we do within
Sophos Central is automated or simplified, saving
us time. We are now looking forward to trialling
Intercept X on our servers and continuing ourclose relationship with Sophos.”‘We have relayed ourpositive experiences
regarding ourSophos use casesand how we manage
malware threats toother universities
to share knowledge
within the sector. The
administration andclear dashboard inSophos Central are ahuge improvement.’
Gary Foster, senior manager – CyberSecurity, Durham University

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Sophos solutions, call(0)8447 671131 or email
sales@sophos.com.

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