Marian University Boosts Visibility with Cisco Secure

Overview

Marian University is a distinguished midwestern college located in Indianapolis, Indiana, that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees. The university’s goal is to prepare students not only to be part of the workforce but also to be transformative leaders in the world. Technology plays a critical role in this mission since network slowdowns, outages, and data privacy issues can greatly interfere with the quality of education.

Unifying technology for better security

Marian University has been recognized for both innovation and value. To maintain this reputation, the university’s IT and security teams must work hard to support and secure students and staff around the clock—in the most efficient ways. 

Previously, the university had been using a variety of disparate networking and security technologies that did not provide the visibility or user experience required for success. Marian University is now operating on a unified Cisco network and incorporating integrated security technologies into its infrastructure.

"We’re conscious about making sure that any investment we make benefits and protects the students, as well as the growth of the university," said Ray Stanley, CIO and vice president of technology at Marian University. "It’s important to make sure that the technology in our stack works together and provides the safest computing environment possible."

With more than 4100 students, one of the main challenges faced by the university’s IT team is allowing personal devices onto the network without compromising the security of other systems. To help alleviate this challenge, Marian University is working towards microsegmentation and zero-trust architecture. Its current Cisco security deployments are crucial stepping stones on this path. 

"One of the biggest advantages of using Cisco technology is that once we make an investment, we can get the most out of that investment not just one time, but moving forward as well," said Stanley. The university uses an integrated set of Cisco security technologies, including Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Cisco Secure Firewall, Cisco Secure Client (including AnyConnect), Cisco Duo, and Cisco Secure Endpoint.

Marian University began its security journey with Cisco by deploying Cisco ISE—now the backbone of the university's zero trust implementation—for network access control. Marian University also transitioned from its previous firewall to Secure Firewall for enhanced insight and enforcement. 

According to Paul Smith, network administrator at Marian University, Secure Firewall Management Center provides much-needed visibility into network traffic versus their previous solution. "With Secure Firewall's dashboards and reporting tools, we can provide insight to our executives in a format they can use," said Smith. "Being able to see current threat trends and keep everyone informed has been a huge win for us."

Cisco Secure Firewall has also enabled Marian University to improve its defense by more quickly detecting and blocking threats. "When the Log4j vulnerability was discovered, we were protected before we even completed our patching," said Smith. "Due to automated hourly updates from Cisco Talos threat intelligence, Secure Firewall had an early detection signature, so it was already blocking the concerning traffic from infiltrating our network." With Cisco Talos, customers are continuously safeguarded from known and unknown threats.

Building toward zero trust

Marian University has also recently implemented several other Cisco technologies to build towards its zero trust vision, including Duo for multi-factor authentication (MFA). "MFA went from being a nice-to-have technology to an absolute requirement overnight," said Stanley. "For us, Cisco Duo's integration with firewall and the other security products made it a no-brainer."

The university is currently using Duo to provide reliable, secure access for all of its faculty and staff and will soon extend it to students to create a single sign-on (SSO) environment. "Cisco Duo has been very intuitive from an administrative standpoint in terms of onboarding and managing all of the various devices," said Travis Paul, manager of infrastructure for Marian University. 

The university is also using Secure Client with AnyConnect VPN alongside Duo for remote access. And it has rounded out its security portfolio with Cisco Secure Endpoint for advanced protection of its myriad of devices. "Cisco has set us up with a solid foundation for achieving all of our future networking and security goals," said Smith.

Additionally, Marian University is getting extra value from its Cisco security portfolio by taking advantage of integration points through Cisco SecureX. With SecureX, organizations can correlate data from multiple technologies and use extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities for more coordinated threat mitigation. 

"The more integrations, the more information we get, and the more proactive we can be," said Paul. "And if something does come up, with all of this integrated information, we can react very quickly."

Reliable defense and safe students

With Cisco Secure, Marian University has built a cohesive security ecosystem for stronger defense and is rapidly progressing toward full zero trust deployment. "Our relationship with Cisco is one of the main reasons why we continue to grow from a security standpoint," said Stanley. "Without Cisco's strategic feedback and relationship, we wouldn't be where we are today."

"At the end of the day, it's about risk aversion, avoiding data breaches, and safeguarding the assets of the university," he added. "Technology is critical for a top-notch education, and Cisco gives us the best chance to protect our students and provide them with a quality academic experience."