Cyber
Case Study

 

HarfangLab protects Université Paris Cité’s 75,000 users against cyber threats, while meeting the institution’s budgetary constraints. Mathieu Thuaire, CISO, explains. 

harfang-why
Context

Université Paris Cité has 15,000 employees and 60,000 students, and wanted to protect 10,000 endpoints, comprising workstations and servers, including virtual machines.

This is a very large surface area to protect with limited budgetary resources, and at the same time the establishment had to meet the challenges posed by Cloud adoption, GDPR compliance, and work with sovereign players.

What’s more, in addition to cybersecurity solutions, Université Paris Cité also needed to rely on skilled resources to oversee tools and analyze data, but didn’t have the ability to recruit and train a dedicated team in the short term.

The answer to these challenges was to call on trusted players. With this in mind, HarfangLab was identified as an Open XDR player, with its modular, scalable EDR integrated into an ecosystem of recognized partners.

Why HarfangLab?

The cybersecurity market includes a large number of companies around the world, nevertheless, Université Paris Cité wanted to favor a sovereign, GDPR-compliant solution, enabling access to all data hosted in Europe. This narrowed the choice.

A European and 100% open EDR, HarfangLab corresponded exactly to the institution’s needs, in addition to its ability to rapidly evolve its product in line with feedback expressed by its customers.

“In addition to respecting our budgetary framework, HarfangLab perfectly meets our needs in terms of data protection and availability. What’s more, it’s a solution that offers solid, support.”
Mathieu Thuaire, CISO

Deployment & Support

Université Paris Cité is made up of a number of different entities that need to be coordinated. By calling on Orange Cyber Défense to operate HarfangLab’s EDR, the institution benefited from the expertise of this partner, who was able to deploy the solution while mastering the specificities of the administration.

The deployment was even specially adapted for the University, in particular via an instance that encompasses several sub-departments, each with its own dedicated console, which the CISO can monitor. This non-standard deployment is an essential asset. Orange Cyber Défense is also responsible for managing the heterogeneous machines and OS, by publishing customized scripts for Université Paris Cité.

Results

“The EDR is a real micro-SOC with which I can monitor and secure the entire IT infrastructure, isolating workstations if necessary… knowing that the fleet to be supervised is very heterogeneous, and that users must be free in the use of workstations.”
Mathieu Thuaire, CISO

In short, working through an MSSP enables Université Paris Cité to benefit from the right tools and the resources to operate them, while meeting budgetary constraints.

Whereas it takes around 18 months on average to train an analyst, MSSP’s service gives the University’s security team immediate access to optimum protection, and enables network and system administrators to upgrade their skills.

“I’m satisfied with both the EDR and the partner we have with us, who has been able to adapt to meet our needs. As a whole, this system is helping us to better control and optimize our IS. HarfangLab can be deployed very quickly, so my advice for doing so under the best conditions is above all good IT hygiene, and that’s what adopting an EDR is pushing us towards!”
Mathieu Thuaire, CISO