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Brazilian University, Unisinos, Simplifies Cyber Security Management

We’re able to review and monitor our entire threat landscape on a daily basis, creating new rules and removing old rules. We’re always looking for greater protection.

Maikon Rodrigo Graeff, Security Expert Unisinos

Unisinos is a leading private university, located at Sao Leopoldo, near Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil. Founded in 1969 with its roots in the Jesuit community, it is ranked among the best in the country by the Brazilian Ministry of Education. The university has a strategic orientation towards science, technology and innovation, with 30,000 students and more than 1,000 teaching staff.

 

Modernizing Outdated Security Infrastructure
Unisinos had a firewall solution in place for a number of years. As the university expanded and formed links with other Jesuit colleges across Brazil, it was apparent that this solution had grown increasingly outdated.

The university struggled to cope with the increase in security threats, unable to provide visibility of those threats and lacked the control over content access that the modern Unisinos required.

This vulnerability became clear during the annual registration of new students. Concentrated cyber-attacks during this period left the Unisinos system down for an entire day, causing considerable disruption and inconvenience for everyone.

Targeted Protection and Simplified Management
After consulting with local IT partner, Sentinela Security, Unisinos selected Check Point next generation appliances with Virtual System technology, R80 Security Management, CloudGuard IaaS, and VSX technologies as part of a comprehensive move to help upgrade, protect and manage its IT infrastructure, giving the university’s IT department greater visibility of threats to the network before attacks could occur.

Check Point R80 Security Management gives Unisinos a single console with a unified view into all security events allowing them to manage all aspects of cyber security for their physical, virtual and cloud based environments. Check Point Next Generation Security Gateways are designed for high performance and reliability, and support Unisinos’s growing capacity requirements. “Management of the solution was one of the main factors in the purchase decision-making process”, explains Maikon Rodrigo Graeff, a security expert at Unisinos. “The visibility and control provided by the Check Point solution made all the difference when making this decision.”

From a single console, Unisinos can monitor threats and analyze events, turning on automated responses to prevent specific threats. CloudGuard IaaS private cloud ensures that data held in the private cloud is fully protected.

Improved Security and Real-Time Visibility in a Dynamic Environment
Maikon Rodrigo Graeff says the investment in the R80 Security Management solution has made it easier to manage the security landscape by providing a single view of the university’s IT security: “We have greater visibility and are better able to manage our weaknesses.”

It is now easier for the university to manage its assets in a dynamic environment: “Education is not like industry where you may update policies once a month. For us, we may need to change things hourly.” R80 unifies policy management, allowing multiple administrators to delegate and collaborate without conflict, empowering security teams to set up and manage policies all at the same time. The university can now deliver new services to students, employees and professors faster and with confidence.

And when Unisinos took control of a smaller university in Brazil and needed to create an Azure cloud solution between the two, it was protected by extending the use of CloudGuard IaaS.

Ultimately, the university, and everyone within it, is more secure and has a clearer understanding of new threats. “We’re very satisfied with Check Point’s capacity to detect and combat these attacks,” says Graeff. “Previously, we often didn’t know when and where we were vulnerable.”

With the perimeter secure, Unisinos is now looking to secure its mobile workers too. “Increasingly, staff and students want to work from mobile devices. We want them to be able to do this securely,” says Fernanda Bonotto, IT Manager, Unisinos, “but that requires control beyond the perimeter.”

In response, Unisinos is testing a wide range of Check Point products, including SandBlast Agent for endpoints, SandBlast Network and CloudGuard SaaS. “We believe these will deliver valuable additional
layers of protection,” says Bonotto.

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