RCSI

RCSI operates nearly 4,000 students across four global campuses (Dublin, Bahrain, Dubai and two in Malaysia), with a dispersed user base and a large, virtualised server estate. Good web filtering, firewalling and endpoint security were already in place, but the organisation had no way to know about a problem until it had already surfaced. Security was reactive rather than preventative.

Universities are a frequent target for cybercriminals seeking personal data, research findings and intellectual property, and face regular DDoS attempts against operational continuity. RCSI's open, academic-travel-driven infrastructure, with four to five devices per user, meant more potential entry points into the network than the team could fully account for. The environment's mix of on-premise, cloud and hybrid cloud added further complexity.

Smarttech247 and RCSI ran a four-week technology review before selecting IBM QRadar, followed by an eight-week proof of concept, both unusually fast timelines. From signed contract and purchase order to going formally live took twelve weeks in total, with the whole engagement, evaluation through to live, completed within roughly three months.

QRadar now consolidates millions of daily events from network flows, vulnerabilities, Windows systems and cloud feeds into a single view, with rules customised to give a near real-time read on potential malware or malicious activity. This gives RCSI's leadership a live dashboard to demonstrate what's being caught, what's being tracked and what's still under investigation, replacing uncertainty with a documented, defensible security posture.

The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland was formed in 1784 by Royal Charter to train surgeons, and has since grown into a university spanning undergraduate medicine, nursing, midwifery, pharmacy, dentistry and physiotherapy across its global campuses.

Smarttech247 deployed IBM QRadar SIEM from scratch, working with RCSI's team through setup and test scripts before going live. The proof of concept and rollout were, in the CIO's words, "really, really comfortable," with Smarttech247 clear from the outset about what needed to happen and who was doing it.

"We had a great experience dealing with Smarttech247 from the very beginning. Their security experts helped us build a smarter and more secure network within RCSI with IBM QRadar."