Livingston Parish Public School System (Livingston Parish) prides itself on offering a safe, positive climate that enhances learning for over 26,000 K-12 students. But when a malware attack began to disrupt the district’s network, their IT team knew they needed help, and fast. Transformyx helped the IT team at Livingston Parish not only contain and remediate the attack, but also leverage Cisco technology to better protect their schools and student data from modern cyber threats.
The situation, needs, and challenges
After noticing accessibility and wide-scale network performance issues one fall morning, Livingston Parish’s IT team quickly realized they were dealing with a district-wide malware attack. Although there was IT staff dedicated to security protocols, they pooled together as many resources as they could to diagnose the threat and contain the damage. However, the security infrastructure they had in place was not able to provide the visibility needed into this advanced attack. It was then that they reached out to Cisco for expert advice.
Livingston Parish’s Technology Director identified the following as his top priorities during the consultation:
- Containing and remediating the threat: Ensuring it was done as fast as possible, and with the least budget impact
- Protecting sensitive student data: Ensuring there was no exfiltration of student data from their district’s network
- Bolstering their security plan: Ensuring they learned from the attack and could improve their existing security plan
In addition to several of their own engineers and subject matter experts, Cisco’s security team brought in Transformyx for their security expertise. Together, they quickly met with Livingston Parish’s IT team to walk through the details of the breach and help them contain it.
“Umbrella and AMP have been of huge benefit to the district. The technical assistance coming from Transformyx and working with their experts to help look at products and go through best practice has created a partnership to create a multi-layer security protocol. We have started to create a strong inside outside structure internally.”
-Carlos Williams, Director of Technology
The LTG solution
Transformyx’s solution
To buy the time necessary to contain the threat and identify the cause of the breach, Transformyx and Cisco helped Livingston Parish take advantage of a Cisco Umbrella free trial program. After the successful proof of concept, they showed Livingston Parish the fastest way to remediate the damage, as well as improve their security infrastructure so something like this would be less likely to occur in the future.
Along with implementing Cisco Umbrella to further protect their users from accessing dangerous websites, Transformyx recommended they implement Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP). It would allow Livingston Parish to block malware that made it past their perimeter defenses and provide a level of visibility into the network that their current security infrastructure could not offer.
Transformyx helped Livingston Parish build a multi-layer approach to security with Cisco Technology that is built to work together:
- Cisco Umbrella: Provides a first line of defense against threats on the internet and protects Livingston Parish’s users anywhere they go by filtering DNS requests to block malware before it reaches endpoints.
- Cisco AMP for Endpoints: Provides the ability for Livingston Parish to block malware at the point of entry, gain visibility into files and executable-level activity, and remove malware from any device before further damage is done.
- Cisco AMP for Networks: Provides the ability for Livingston Parish to block highly sophisticated malware attacks that evade their other layers of security, as well as deep visibility into network-level threat activity.
Because fitting the financial investment into their budget was an issue, Transformyx worked with Livingston Parish to build a Business Impact Analysis (BIA). It enabled them to show decisionmakers the ROI that this technology would drive through things like automation and the fact that they would have to invest less in contractors to fill capacity gaps within their IT team.
The results and ultimate benefits
Livingston Parish’s IT team recognizes that being proactive with security is crucial in today’s threat landscape. Thanks to Transformyx’s “service before product” mentality and the Cisco security team’s support, Livingston Parish was able to defeat the malware that invaded their network. With Cisco Umbrella and AMP now fully in place, they are benefitting from their new, automated multi-level, security infrastructure program on a daily basis.
IT benefits:
• More time to focus on enhancing education
• Improved visibility into network activity and threats
• A single dashboard to monitor network security
• Hands-off, automated cyber threat protection
School district benefits:
• The ability to focus on teaching and learning, not security
• District and student data are far less vulnerable
• Less security risk and multi-level overall security plan
Cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated and much harder for IT professionals to manage – especially in the education space. If you’d like to learn how we can help you build a reliable solution to secure your network and improve your overall visibility, schedule a meeting today by visiting
