This week, join Cisco at EDUCAUSE 2020 for insightful and innovative sessions on how we are building the bridge between Education Now and Education Next.
Listen in on our speaking session at EDUCAUSE with Cisco’s Peter Romness and UNC Charlotte’s Dr. Michael Carlin and Jesse Beauman to learn about the adaptive university of the future.
UNC Charlotte is North Carolina’s urban research university, serving nearly 30,000 students through eight colleges and 4,500 faculty and staff members. With nearly $52 Million dollars in research funding at the university, UNC Charlotte (UNCC) has an abundance of critical data that necessitates an innovative and comprehensive security platform.
Meet OneIT: UNCC’s Blended IT Model
What is OneIT?
OneIT is the university office that aims to:
“Provide highly reliable information technology infrastructure, tools, and services to empower the University to achieve its academic, research, administrative, and service goals.”
When a state auditor identified risks at the university surrounding the existing distributed IT model, the chancellor launched a two-year initiative to strengthen operations and service delivery, build a more efficient campus, and decrease the replication and duplication of services. Overall: they set out to secure, streamline, and enhance agility – across the university.
This initiative was underway and poised for roll-out when the global COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Facing the Pandemic
From equity of access to availability of equipment, UNC Charlotte faced a host of challenges when they made the transition to remote teaching. However, the single largest challenge: how could they manage security, with people working and learning from home in never before seen numbers, without creating unnecessary hurtles to complicate the teaching and learning process?
An Invisible, Flexible Security Solution
“Our customers have enough challenges, with teaching, and running the campus, and learning, without adding more hurtles, and more popups, and more tools they have to learn. So, what can we do to really protect our campus community … quite silently, behind the scenes, without them ever knowing it?”
Dr. Michael Carlin, Vice Chancellor for Technology and Chief Information Officer (CIO), University of North Carolina at Charlotte
By using an advanced, unified security portfolio, UNC Charlotte has the capacity to protect intellectual property, personal information, and sensitive university data.
Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) enables UNCC to block over 1,000 system compromises per day, without the system users ever experiencing interruption. Likewise, Cisco Umbrella blocks over 5,000 malicious URL attempts per day without disturbing user website experiences.
Cisco Secure enables UNC Charlotte to provide an integrated approach to security.
“It’s (Cisco Secure) reduced our response time and allowed us to move from a reactive security posture to a proactive security posture.”
Jesse Beauman, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Enterprise Infrastructure
Invisibility is critical to UNCC’s mission. By partnering with Cisco to provide a seamless, flexible experience that protects researchers, academics, students, and the campus itself, UNC Charlotte is a beacon in the provision of “intelligent security.”
>> Read the UNC Charlotte E-Book
>> Learn how Cisco facilitates safety and security in higher education.
Want to know more about UNC Charlotte’s innovation in education security? Join us at EDUCAUSE to listen to the session on Tuesday, October 27th.
Hungry for more? Stay tuned for our Global Leaders Forum thought leadership mini-series kicking off next week in #EducationNow.
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