Tanium, a provider of Converged Endpoint Management (XEM), has recently declared the achievement of its collaboration with Canterbury Christ Church University. The partnership led to a reduction in the university's endpoint vulnerabilities of more than 98%.

Canterbury Christ Church University, widely acknowledged as one of the UK’s leading progressive universities, has always used top-of-the-range technologies to enhance the experience of their staff and beyond 26,000 students. In early 2023, the university trialled Tanium and came across previously undetected vulnerabilities and patches. Subsequently, by Spring 2023, Tanium’s XEM platform had been fully introduced to the IT operations and security teams, offering total real-time visibility across the university’s estate.

Andy Powell, Deputy Director and Chief Technology Officer at Canterbury Christ Church University, remarked: “I am always thinking about how we can use technology to stay ahead of the curve. Keeping staff, students, and valuable research data secure is paramount. The centralised Tanium XEM platform opened our eyes to what was possible when we had a full, real-time view of our estate.”

Elaborating on the efficacy of Tanium XEM, Powell said: “Tanium is the Swiss-army knife of cybersecurity, working across our challenging hybrid cloud environment with thousands of connected student devices to keep us constantly secure and compliant. The speed at which we can identify and plug vulnerabilities is remarkable."

Cybersecurity processes like Cyber Essentials self-assessments, a key compliance requirement, which used to take a fortnight, can now be completed in a single morning using Tanium XEM. Paul Locke, Cyber Security Manager at the university, mentioned how Tanium gave them "real peace of mind" and validated the process as something more than just an audit.

Thanks to automatic updates through the Tanium platform, the team can now maintain aggressive patching while dedicating their focus on more strategic tasks. Outdated tech licenses that previously posed huge security challenges have been effectively dealt with through regular updates provided by the Tanium XEM.

Kirk Bellerby, education lead at Tanium, emphasised that the U.K. government’s Cyber Essentials framework demands that IT teams have thorough and efficient methods of ensuring compliance. He stated: "This keeps students safe, as well as highly sensitive research data, which is being targeted on a regular basis. With a constant target on their backs, organisations need complete, real-time visibility of their IT environments to ensure the necessary level of defence against these attacks."

The university accesses the Tanium platform via the Tanium Cloud, requiring no physical hardware investment on their premise.