Jordan School District
Achieves compliance and greater visibility with TrendAI Vision One™
OVERVIEW
Valuable student data makes school districts a lucrative target for hackers. Unfortunately for publicly funded districts, threat protection can be a challenge.
“We have to walk a fine line. We must be secure without taking away from our core mission of educating kids,” says David Bowman Jr., Jordan School District’s systems and security manager.
As the fourth largest school district in Utah, serving more than 56,000 students across 63 schools, Jordan School District needed to update its security solutions to enhance protection of student data and meet compliance. In addition to meeting the requirements of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the district had added new technologies over the years that required increased emphasis on data security.
Industry
Education
Employees
6,500
Region
United States, North America
Students
56,000
IT Environment
Microsoft, Apple, Google, VMWare
Solutions
- Reduced spam by 40% and phishing attempts by 50%
- Stopped three ransomware attacks in the first month
- Improved data security and compliance while keeping costs in check
CHALLENGES
Bowman and his security team recognized the district’s security landscape has changed dramatically over the years, and that its existing security solution, deployed five years prior, had not evolved significantly. Their previous solution slowed down district devices and networks and could not meet the school’s increasingly stringent compliance requirements.
“We needed something more adaptive and real-time to match the current threat landscape. We also needed to quantify what we were getting for what we were spending. Our existing provider’s systems didn’t give us the protection, analytics, data, reporting, or the detection and response capabilities we required,” says Bowman.
The level of threat response capabilities and protection we are getting out of TrendAI Vision One™ are impacted.
David Bowman Jr.
System and Security Manager, Jordan School District
WHY TRENDAI™
The district evaluated four security providers to replace its existing system, but alternative solutions did not seem to be an improvement. “I saw that TrendAI™ is in the leadership position on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms. That made me want to investigate them more,” says Bowman.
The fact that TrendAI™ solutions with XDR capabilities went beyond identifying existing threats to show his staff why a threat mattered and how to fix it was a deciding factor in choosing TrendAI™.
“It gave us a more robust tool for educating and teaching our staff,” says Bowman.
Additionally, TrendAI™ provides organizations with the opportunity to access and trial emerging XDR technologies like TrendAI Vision One™ that they may be unable to afford.
“The ability to test next-level solutions like TrendAI Vision One™ in our environment made a huge difference. TrendAI™ is very education friendly,” says Bowman.
We have since seen a 40% reduction in spam and a 50% reduction in phishing.
David Bowman Jr.
System and Security Manager, Jordan School District
SOLUTION
Jordan School District selected TrendAI™ Apex One™ as a Service for endpoint protection, bundled with advanced XDR through TrendAI Vision One™, to replace its existing security solution. “The comprehensive solution offered in TrendAI™ Apex One as a Service made the decision easier. We looked at piecemeal solutions, and by the time we added them all up— server protection, email protection, endpoint protection—it was astronomically expensive. TrendAI™ Apex One had all that built in,” says Bowman.
The district adopted TrendAI Vision One™ for its advanced XDR capabilities that collect and correlate deep activity data across multiple vectors.
“The level of threat response capabilities and protection we are getting out of TrendAI Vision One™ is impactful,” says Bowman.
RESULTS
Shortly after using TrendAI™’s solutions, Jordan School District located a keylogger in a student’s cloud-based storage drive. Using information from TrendAI™ Cloud App Security, they determined the student wasn’t a high schooler, but a elementary school student with advanced computer science knowledge.
“We used a TrendAI™ alert to show the student that a tool he downloaded—which he thought was legitimate—came with a keylogger built in. It was very eye-opening for him,” says Bowman.
The district also stopped three ransomware attacks in the first month of deploying TrendAI™.
“We have since seen a 40% reduction in spam and a 50% reduction in phishing attempts. TrendAI™ improved our security posture, and now I look like a hero,” says Bowman.
TrendAI™’s track record of constantly evolving their platforms to stay ahead of emerging threats gives the district assurance that their compliance requirements will be met. TrendAI™ solutions and its platform approach also reduced the district’s latency problem and gives it more control over alerts.
“TrendAI™ lets us modify and control security alerts so we can send them only to specific individuals in certain circumstances,” says Bowman.
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