"The absence of evidence of exploitation currently occurring does not preclude a vulnerability from being exploited in the future." CISA
Education Institutions, especially universities, have unique challenges to face when protecting their networks, requiring both an open access culture for students, staff and research but needing to secure their networks and the data that is held within them, as well as meeting different federal compliance requirements.
Managing a network in these circumstances is not a straightforward process.
With open access networks for students, staff and researchers, which may contain valuable personal and financial information, and users who are often using personal devices to access the network, it's not surprising that they are attractive to attacks from cyber criminals. With large attack surfaces to defend, it’s important for SOC and NOC teams to make sure that the configuration of networks assessed and validated regularly as is critical to protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability (CIA) of the most sensitive data, systems, and services.
Detecting and preventing the exploitation of vulnerable misconfigurations is a top priority for Network and Security Operations teams. This is why education establishments around the world are choosing Titania Nipper to gain visibility of their security posture and compliance status across their expanding attack surface. Nipper is a trusted component in the vulnerability management toolsets of 30+ federal agencies, helping them assess routers, switches and firewalls to detect critical misconfiguration.
The software also provides agencies with risk mitigation advice and device specific technical fixes to improve mean time to remediate. Nipper can then be used to track when vulnerabilities have been remediated, providing an up-to-date view of the security and compliance posture of the agency to ensure skilled network resources are used to best effect.
With Nipper Enterprise agencies are now able to continuously assess network security on an up-to-hourly basis and have a roadmap to playbook-controlled remediation of identified misconfigurations.
