Page 14 - THE Journal Innovation in Education, October 2021
P. 14
Innovation in Education | iVANTI – learn more at ivanti.com
Start with the End(point) in Mind
The right security solution will protect schools against ransomware and other threats while still allowing teaching and learning to continue.
Bill Harrod
Public Sector CTO Ivanti
IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO: A TEACHER’S MOUSE
dies at home while she’s preparing a lesson. She goes
rummaging and quickly finds an old mouse with its USB dongle still intact. She lugs her laptop to school, plugs the dongle in, and the operating system begins downloading and installing a driver that just happens to open a vulnerability allowing users to gain system privileges through the
device — privileges that would allow someone else to install whatever he or she chooses, including malware.
The endpoint — whether a mouse, a mobile device or something else — has come to represent the weakest link in the chain of K-12 cybersecurity. If district IT can’t secure all of those myriad endpoints attaching to the network, a break-in leading to ransomware or a data breach is a very real possibility. The question becomes, how can IT address the threats and risks schools are facing while also making sure users — students, teachers, administrators and staff — have the access they need?
Achieving Zero Trust
While the concept of zero trust serves as a useful framework for understanding the goal of posting a guard at every entry and maintaining clear lines of authorization and authentication, getting it done is another matter. Somebody has to do the work of implementing endpoint management and security.
Consider the challenge of mobile endpoint patching. IT churns through cycles continuously applying long lists of patches, mitigating risks for which there may be no exploit and that may not be in line for attack. According to a recent Ivanti report, “Patch Management Challenges,” 71% of IT and security professionals find patching to be overly complex and time-consuming. And the patching efforts may only address district-owned devices along with the small share of end users with their own devices who are willing to go through the patch process. What about everybody and everything else?
The key is knowing what patches are crucial and being able to prioritize patch decisions that are going to provide
the greatest security. The patch management approach needs to apply threat intelligence and risk assessment. Then it needs to be enabled on all devices — district-owned or not — without the process relying on interaction from users.
Access Control Decisions
At the same time, IT needs to discover new devices coming onto the network, whether those are sensors running in the new ventilation system, a Bluetooth speaker operating in the school media lab or the principal’s new Apple Watch.
What’s required is a solution that can handle decision making on a lot of fronts efficiently:
Vetting the network from which the user or component is transmitting — is it a home hotspot, a coffee shop Wi-Fi network or the public library?
Validating that the device is in compliance — that it hasn’t been rooted or jailbroken.
Confirming that the applications being used are authorized and haven’t been compromised.
Validating users’ credentials based on multifactor authentication.
All of those feed into making access control decisions that grant the right people the right access to the right applications and data from anywhere at any time.
Ingrained Intelligence
The job of K-12 cybersecurity begins and ends with the endpoint and making sure it’s no longer the weakest link. Ivanti does that by producing integrated solutions with risk intelligence and hyper automation for delivering:
Mobile endpoint security management Risk-based access control
Patch management
Asset discovery
Service management
14 | SPONSORED CONTENT
