With our focus on providing the best possible service to empower the academic community, I wanted to share a recent project with our partner, Southwestern Adventist University, and how SentinelOne has provided a significant amount of confidence in their security approach against malware and ransomware mitigation.
Nestled in the town of Keene, Texas, Southwestern Adventist University offers a special opportunity for students who desire to get the most out of their college experience. Founded in 1893 and accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, Southwestern continues its rich history of providing exceptional value. The University offers 58 majors including a new Associate of Applied Science Degree in Fire Science. Their campus is home to distinctions such as the dinosaur lab with over 20,000 bones, a radio and television station, and an extensive academic success program.
When we poll many of the IT Departments we work with, one area that keeps them up at night is security and data loss prevention. The rise of security data breaches is, unfortunately, part of almost daily conversations. After speaking with the Information Technology team at SWAU, their security posture was an area of interest and investigation. They are extremely happy with their firewall and traditional anti-virus and, to date, have not had any issues. They, however, had concerns that it was only a matter of time before they were targeted by malware and/or ransomware. Taking a proactive approach, their team wanted to find a solution to help address today’s advanced threats, a “Next Generation Endpoint Protection” (NGEP) solution. Many of today’s advanced attacks will sneak right past most traditional AV solutions in the small amount of time it takes to get the updated signature. A major area of concern is the vulnerability in the time between detection and response. The key to an effective NGEP lies in the ability to intelligently uncover and behaviorally detect advanced threats, and respond at machine speed. To simplify, it employs advanced machine learning, data analysis and AI to identify new attack methodologies. The solution will then define them as malicious and protect against them.
After hosting a security briefing with SentinelOne earlier this year, SWAU wanted to sit down and fully understand how SentinelOne would fit within their environment. The demo provided a great overview and insight as to how this would help address their concern of malware and ransomware mitigation. They really liked that their product leverages AI and machine learning to identify new attack methodologies. It has a small footprint which is important to their end-users; they don’t want a solution which will interfere with daily tasks. The dashboard provides great functionality and has easy navigation. One of the biggest features was the ability to rollback. In the event that something malicious does happen, administrators have the ability to automatically remove files or rollback changes, even small ones. If in alert-only mode, administrators will be able to see the timeline of events, and make the determination of whether the file is actually malicious. Once the administrator determines that a file has performed malicious actions, they can roll those actions back with a single click.
Southwestern Adventist University’s Director of Information Technology Services – Charles Lewis – is very pleased with SentinelOne.
“So far our experience has been great. It’s by far the best AV solution we’ve ever had.”
ScholarBuys was thrilled to be a part of SWAU’s process in identifying a new solution to address modern-day malware and the ever-changing cyber-security threat landscape!
