Case Study - Security Assessment for Vanguard University

Due to its reliance on its IT systems and programs, the university was worried about the safety of its environment. They hoped that by identifying where their security was lacking, they might take steps toward closing those holes. During the evaluation, we found concerns with the system's ability to verify users' identities and prevent unauthorized access. Over 1200 user accounts, including executive-level ones, were found to be either password-less or to be using the default password.

Akins IT carried out a comprehensive cyber security evaluation with the assistance of our security specialists to detect gaps in their security profile and made the following recommendations as a result:

• We assisted the university in achieving a proper AD Connect by updating the Source Anchor to link objects in their Azure Active Directory environment to active directory domain services (AD DS);
• Enabled multi-factor authentication and implemented automatic risk remediation for identity protection;
• Completely implemented password and identity policies.

Because the evaluation found the security flaws, Vanguard was able to fix a lot of them and create a new password policy that required single sign-on and different passwords for each user. Because of this, they strengthened their security posture even more and maintained this momentum. One thousand two hundred user accounts have now been effectively secured, and the password policies have been enforced.