There’s no industry or organization that is not at risk of a cyberattack today, and the education industry is particularly vulnerable, as many schools continue to have online learning.
Safety and education must go hand in hand, said a spokesperson for Toronto-based cybersecurity managed services provider ISA Cybersecurity in a conversation with IT World Canada.
Related:
Canadian school board hit by ‘cyber security incident’
ISA Cybersecurity and IBM Canada have partnered to help a large Ontario school board protect student information in its systems, and protect the students and their families from becoming potential victims and targets, using IBM’s security information and event management (SIEM) platform QRadar.
“ISA Cybersecurity has extensive experience and knowledge in education sector; most recently, this allowed us to customize and configure IBM QRadar to the unique needs of a large Ontario school board,” Kevin Dawson, president and chief executive officer at ISA Cybersecurity, told IT World Canada. “We started working together to provide proof of concept on this project for the large school board in Ontario in March 2021.”
Developed by IBM in New Brunswick in 2020, QRadar uses artificial intelligence to provide an organization visibility into its enterprise data, across on-premises and cloud-based environments, in a single pane of glass, providing a single source of security information, detection, and analysis.
ISA Cybersecurity did the installation and configuration of QRadar, and applied its technical expertise to design custom elements (parsers and use cases) to meet the school board’s special security needs (e.g., specific educational software, and sensitive data that is uniquely important to the school board). It also implemented UBA (User Behaviour Analytics) that will enable improved future, user-based investigation into cyber incidents, explained Dawson.
“ISA Cybersecurity also made it easy for our client to procure the technology, as we have a formal service agreement with ecosystem partners like the Ontario Education Collaborative Marketplace (OECM). This makes the procurement process seamless for school boards because we have been vetted as an innovative and reputable supplier that offers top-quality security solutions and services.”
ISA Cybersecurity’s partnership with IBM was formed more than two years ago, and IBM was named ISA Cybersecurity’s Partner of the Year in 2020. As an IBM Canadian Gold Partner focused entirely on cybersecurity, ISA Cybersecurity teams up with IBM to help organizations elevate their security posture.
