About Universidad La Salle México
Universidad La Salle Mexico is an institution of International and Innovative Higher Education, with social responsibility, human sense, vision for the future and more than sixty years of prestige forming: Professionals with Value.
The educational model of La Salle University has been distinguished by the Ministry of Public Education by granting it the title of University of Excellence with National Leadership; they have the Lisa y Llana accreditation by the Federation of Private Mexican Institutions of Higher Education (FIMPES) and each study program is recognized by the respective accrediting body; which certifies the quality of the administrative, academic, training and academic-administrative processes. They offer high school, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees.
Challenges
Compliance with local legislation requirements and increased preparedness for security breaches
With the introduction of a new Mexico Local Data Protection Law that protects personal information from being disclosed without that person’s authorization, University La Salle Mexico needed to accelerate their strategy to better secure and protect student and faculty data. Moreover, their existing security tool lacked adequate protection against DDoS and other volumetric attacks, as well as protection against bad bots that could exploit vulnerabilities in their system.
In addition, the university’s tool did not include statistics on traffic classification. Information on attacks and vulnerabilities wasn’t available for reporting to leadership—or for auditing purposes, be it for internal needs or ISO27001, an international standard that provides a framework for managing and protecting sensitive information within organizations.
To comply with the law, ensure the safety of sensitive information and gain access to proper reporting statistics, Universidad La Salle Mexico had to swiftly implement a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy to shield their digital infrastructure from these threats.
Deployment
Imperva Cloud WAF: Easy to Use, Informative, Protective
Universidad La Salle Mexico conducted a proof of value (POV) with Imperva as part of their relationship with OCM-IT®, a Mexico-based company with presence in the USA and Central America, serving financial, corporate, industrial, educational, and government sectors. The objective of the POV was to compare the reporting capabilities and real-time incident detection and alerts provided by Imperva Cloud WAF.
OCM-IT played a supportive role throughout the POV process, giving the university the opportunity to experience first hand the product benefits where no further validation was needed. As a result of the POV, the decision to permanently integrate Imperva Cloud WAF into the university’s IT environment felt natural.
By making this transition, Universidad La Salle Mexico helped to ensure a robust and secure web application infrastructure while leveraging the advanced capabilities offered by Imperva Cloud WAF. With key performance indicators achieved and use cases addressed, the integration of Imperva Cloud WAF became a logical step forward for the university to enhance ongoing protection and monitoring, empowering the institution to safeguard its digital assets in real time.
Cloud WAF works to stop attacks with near-zero false positives, leveraging a global SOC to strive to strengthen an organization’s protection from the latest attacks minutes after they are discovered. Cloud WAF is part of a multi-layered Application Security solution that combines Advanced Bot Protection, Advanced API Protection, and Advanced DDoS Protection, all from within a centralized management console.
Results
Incident Free for More Than Three Years
With Imperva Cloud WAF, Universidad La Salle Mexico is reducing the incidents of attacks, SQL injection, scripting, and DDoS attacks to zero. In addition, Cloud WAF’s Attack Analytics provides the university with reporting and analysis capabilities they need for viewing and scanning any vulnerability—and having that data to share with university leaders for both visibility and audits. “Imperva provides the tools to validate that all audit requirements are fulfilled, whether it is internal audits or compliant with ISO27001, or the analysis data that supports the risk analysis and also the testing processes.” said Leonardo Quiroz, IT Subdirector, Universidad La Salle México.
The university has not experienced an incident or breach of information in more than three years. “Imperva helps us to gain even more visibility as well as control over attacks which have been raised—yet incidents have yet to jeopardize the information of the institution or any member of the community.” said Omar Mercado, Manager of IT Services, Universidad La Salle México.
