The Power of the Community – making 24×7 cyber protection more cost effective for the sector
An increasing number of universities are signing up and benefitting from the HEITSA Cyber Security Framework, which is helping institutions to simultaneously improve their cyber security posture and drive down costs. In a sector often characterised by budgetary challenges, the framework’s innovative structure ensures that as more universities sign up, the higher the discounts become.
2023 – Year in review
Last year was very successful for our SOC Framework with a large increase in university members adopting the HEITSA Community SOC service. The cyber security service, powered by KHIPU, provides the necessary 24×7 threat monitoring, detection, response, and protection capabilities that are crucial in today’s fight against cyber-attacks across the sector.
“After an extensive review of the market and available Security Operation Centre (SOC) services, we chose KHIPU due to their experience within the sector and capabilities to be able to monitor, detect, protect and prevent threats 24x7x365 across our multi-campus estate. Using the HEITSA Framework made the overall investment significantly lower to the other service provider offerings that we considered.”
Hement Gopal, Information Security, WITS
In addition, we welcomed University of Fort Hare and Rhodes University to the Community SOC, with many other interested institutions considering our cost-effective services to improve their cyber security postures and give them access to ‘always available’ Incident Response (IR) capabilities.
“With the ever-evolving cyber-attack landscape, having 24x7x365 attack monitoring, detection, response and protection in place is crucial today’s world. After an extensive review of cyber security providers, we chose to join the HEITSA Security Operations Centre (SOC) Community, powered by KHIPU. Key reasons include affordability – it’s a cost-effective service negotiated by HEITSA for the sector, its protection, prevention and incident response capabilities are designed for university environments and it’s a community SOC service benefiting all universities who join it.”
Mr Shakes Scott, Interim Chief information Officer (CIO), UFH
These institutions have all unified their existing cyber security solutions and are now benefitting from a 24x7x365 Security Operations Centre (SOC) protected environment with sector-wide immediate response, remediation, and proactive threat hunting capabilities.
Why are universities opting for 24×7 Threat Protection?
The continued rise of cyber threats through phishing, ransomware, unpatched systems, lack of security awareness, misconfigurations, and accidental breaches – coupled with insufficient incident response procedures, are driving universities to opt for community-driven affordable cyber security SOC services.
Why HEITSA’s Community SOC – The Only Sector-Wide Cyber Security Service
HEITSA understands the challenges and requirements associated across the Higher Education sector when it comes to cyber security. Our partnership with KHIPU has enabled us to develop a portfolio of 24×7 SOC services that are affordable, scalable, effective and help address the skills gap across our universities. By leveraging a combination of intelligence, from multiple global threat feeds, and data, drawn from our customers as well as continuous threat hunting, we proactively communicate and protect against highly sophisticated threats and raise awareness of unusual behaviour to every customer subscribed. It is the only Community-Driven SOC service available that has been designed and is continually developed for the Higher Education sector.
FREE 24×7 IR service for all universities coming soon!
Amazing news for our universities. In addition to the above, HEITSA has also negotiated further discounts for those universities wishing to invest in these cyber security services with a free 24×7 Incident Response Service, which will be made available to all universities as of April 2024. A full announcement will be shared shortly.
Summary of the HEITSA Community Security Operations Centre (SOC) Service Expansion
To continually improve the offerings and look at ways to reduce costs that we negotiate on behalf of the sector, we have made several enhancements to the available services via the SOC framework. These include:
- Consortium-based price models: New lower-cost price models enable us to provide higher discounts through economies of scale.
- FREE 24×7 Incident Response (IR) service for all universities: As of April, members will have access to 24×7 IR services.
- Enhanced Cyber Security Service: With the SOC packages, there will now be options for certified cyber security training, IT asset vulnerability assessments and reporting and simulated phishing/user awareness.
Interested in learning more?
- Please read our “HEITSA Community SOC” solution brief attached for further details.
- Webinars were held on the 22nd and 29th of February where we explained the HEITSA Community SOC Framework, what is it, universities being protected by it, case studies and the benefits of using it.
- Request a demonstration / SOC scoping session to determine the right solution for you or come meet Khipu at the Autumn Meeting in April, see heitsa.ac.za for more details.
