With 50,000 students, 5,700 faculty and staff, and 7,200 support workers in 566 buildings, Michigan State University CISO, Seth Edgar, has his work cut out for him protecting everyone on the 5,200-acre campus.
Students are targets for cyber attacks just like faculty and staff: Protecting students is a little more complicated as cybersecurity is an afterthought to most. Edgar’s team has much less control over personal devices, and there is a huge demand for privacy. And the threats are various, spanning from intellectual property to ticket sales scams.
Protecting staff is another big challenge—security is still critical, but the protection must be tailored differently. This wide variety of targets presents unique obstacles for MSU’s security team compared to a team operating in a corporate setting.
Why Proofpoint
To provide a secure space throughout the campus, MSU enrolled Proofpoint because of the people-centric cybersecurity products. The benefits of Proofpoint's product offerings have had an immediate impact.
The university saw a drop in the volume of security incidents, allowing MSU incident responders the ability to focus their attention on more complex tasks.
The tools Proofpoint has put into play with MSU have provided additional insight the university didn't have access to before. For example, Proofpoint's forensic analysis of malware attachment includes information on the sender, how the attack campaign was structured and much more.
Read more about how Proofpoint is a front player on the MSU campus so that these Spartans can always have their game face on.