With threat actors thirsting to steal international research data, what kind of cybersecurity platform can satisfy the community’s exacting needs?
The Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network (SingAREN), has a mission to connect the country’s research and educational organizations to research centers across Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States.
However, securing its high-throughput network that is used by so many different institutions, can be challenging. Routine data transfers could include complex folder structures with hundreds of thousands of individual files and folders. At the same time, network latency can lead to delays in research breakthroughs.
While member institutions in the ecosystem have their own firewalls and security solutions, user devices remain a point of entry for malicious activity.
According to the organization’s president, Prof Francis Lee Bu Sung: “Research data is a target for threat actors. As we faced an increasing number of global attacks, we needed better visibility into our attack surface and security posture.”
Hence, SingAREN wanted the following cybersecurity capabilities in its network:
- A platform that offers comprehensive visibility into the threats targeting the organization: the most frequent attacks, who and where attacks are coming from, and logged details of what threats and incidents are arising from each member institution
- Hyper-scale network security capabilities including a comprehensive suite of tools, plus flexibility, and strong support infrastructure
- An implementation that can help optimize network traffic performance, significantly increasing throughput – even with exceptionally high volumes of data in transit
- AI-powered threat intelligence and reporting capabilities that can foster collaborative security workflows among researchers. This is needed to help SingAREN build trust among its members
- A platform where members can access cybersecurity special interest groups to active share threat intelligence and discussions to enhance their security measures
The organization subsequently engaged Check Point Software Technologies’ solutions that address all the requirements. Over time, the SingAREN team plans to build out additional threat prevention and remediation capabilities to continually bolster the security of its digital footprint. “We see Check Point as a long-term partner,” said Prof Lee, “(that) enables us to support our members, create value for them and be a trusted organization for secure connectivity.”
