SAN FRANCISCO and LONDON – December 11, 2018 – Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK), delivering actions and outcomes from the world of data, today announced that UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, a charity and the UK's shared admissions service for higher education, is using Splunk® Enterprise Security (ES) and Splunk Cloud to monitor, detect and act on security threats. UCAS is now automating significant parts of its digital infrastructure and security operations, allowing the IT team to focus on mitigating future threats and opportunities. To learn more about how UCAS is utilizing machine data for security, read the full case study or listen to the webinar.

UCAS manages almost three million applications from around 700,000 students to over 380 universities and colleges each year, culminating each August with exam results days. UCAS operates in an agile, cloud-first way and required a security solution that would provide visibility into security events across the organization and cloud applications they use. Deploying Splunk ES at the heart of its security operations centre (SOC) gives UCAS an analytics-driven approach to security, maximizing coverage but minimizing potential security threats through automation. The ability to investigate incidents and answer key questions at machine speed will support the notification requirements from multiple compliance mandates such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Directive for operators of critical national services). This provides assurance to stakeholders that key security protocols such as access controls around personal data are being implemented and used correctly across the organization.

“Students, universities and colleges trust us with their data, whether it be exam results or personal contact details, and it is our responsibility to work with leading technology companies like Splunk to safeguard it,” said Neil Bell, security assurance manager, UCAS. “Our decision to use Splunk ES and Splunk Cloud means that we are no longer firefighting day-to-day security issues and can now look to the horizon and prepare for future threats. This ensures that we are not only able to protect the existing generation of student data we hold, but we are also prepared to protect future generations as well.”

In addition to using Splunk ES and Splunk Cloud to support security at UCAS, the organization utilizes the Splunk App for Amazon Web Services (AWS) to monitor its AWS infrastructure. This helps to ensure the correct AWS configuration and optimized billing of the AWS account which is key during the exam results period when the UCAS website receives thousands of hits per second and the infrastructure scales dramatically.

“Forward-thinking organizations recognize that the best way to protect valuable data is by harnessing the power of security analytics using data they already have,” said Richard Timperlake, vice president of EMEA, Splunk. “Leveraging the Splunk portfolio to build a security nerve center, organizations like UCAS can create a security environment that is both robust and efficient.”

For more information on Splunk ES and Splunk Cloud visit the Splunk website.

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