A belt and braces approach to cyber security

“They were scary, but they highlighted the most likely risks and talked about practical ways to protect ourselves.” Dave Fitton, TCG’s director of IT and digital services

Added value services

The group was already in the middle of a programme to upgrade its web filtering and firewall systems using Sophos products and their Jisc account manager recommended adding the Janet Network resolver service (JNRS).

It provides an extra layer of advanced protection and is available to every organisation connected to the Janet Network.

Dave says:

“We’ve always been vigilant about the risk of ransomware threats and because of the extra uncertainty caused by lockdowns we joined some of the Jisc cyber security seminars. We see it as an added-value ‘belt and braces’ service. It gives us extra reassurance and it’s something we can take advantage of as part of our Jisc subscription.”

JNRS includes response policy zone (RPZ) technologies to help in making sure users’ domain name system (DNS) requests made over the Janet Network don’t reach domains that may be compromising. As an additional layer it offers another opportunity to catch anything suspicious that gets past an institution’s perimeter firewall.

JNRS creates continuously updated RPZ feeds, adapting to new and emerging threats to protect users from exposure to risk and the organisation from harm.

“JNRS helps to protect our devices and any other devices that connect to our systems including students’ own devices and anyone using the guest wifi,” says Dave. “That has regularly been up to 9,000 devices per day and this number has increased following our recent merger.”

Quick and easy to set up

Getting started with JNRS was simple.

Dave explains:

“It’s just a couple of settings on the firewall. You just put in the IP addresses, which takes about two minutes for each site, and that’s it. It doesn’t affect the speed of traffic and we don’t get lots of extra calls to the helpdesk as a result. Occasionally teaching staff working in some subject areas find they want to access something that gets flagged for query but it isn’t common and it is easy to resolve."

“The recent upgrade for our firewall and web filtering systems and our adoption of Microsoft Threat Protection (MTP) are part of our ongoing commitment to keeping our students and staff safe and protecting our business operations."

“JNRS, as well as DDoS mitigation, are integral to our security arrangements and we value them as part of our subscription with Jisc.”