Partnership Provides Access to Sophos’ Industry-Leading Endpoint Security, Creating New Opportunities for Students and Organizations Across the State
BOISE, Idaho, October 17, 2023 – Boise State University’s Institute for Pervasive Cybersecurity will partner with Sophos, a global leader in innovating and delivering cybersecurity as a service. This partnership provides Boise State University access to Sophos’ endpoint security offerings, creating experiential learning opportunities for students and increased benefits for Idaho organizations.
The Institute for Pervasive Cybersecurity’s Cyberdome will use Sophos Intercept X with XDR (extended detection and response) to increase cybersecurity services provided to Idaho organizations. The Cyberdome, a collaborative hub for competency-based development, enables Idaho students to gain hands-on work experience by providing cybersecurity services to rural Idaho school districts, counties, and cities. Cyberdome students are enrolled at universities and colleges across Idaho and graduate from the program with critical real-world experience to advance into professional cybersecurity specialist’s positions.
“This partnership brings advanced, next-generation endpoint threat detection and response cybersecurity capabilities to rural organizations that would not otherwise be able to afford or maintain them,” said Edward Vasko, director of the Institute for Pervasive Cybersecurity. “This is a great opportunity for Sophos and Boise State University to collaborate on critically needed cyber defense initiatives and workforce development efforts.”
Sophos Intercept X with XDR will be used by students to monitor client assets, detect threats from cyber adversaries, and report to clients on possible avenues of exploitation. The Cyberdome engages interested rural K-12 school districts, rural counties with election system security, and critical rural city systems that support water and electric districts throughout Idaho. Between January and July of 2023, Cyberdome students monitored over 5,000 assets, analyzed over 53,000 possible attacks and notified clients of 350 potential real-time attacks. Sophos Intercept X with XDR will increase Cyberdome students and staff’s ability to protect and analyze data for possible attacks.
“This partnership supports two critical issues in cybersecurity. First, our Sophos Intercept X endpoint solution will be deployed to different sized organizations around Idaho, including those in rural areas, to help them defend against data breaches, ransomware and other cyberattacks. Organizations in smaller, local communities are not immune to attacks and need frontline protection, detection and response as much as any other business around the world. Second, there is a worldwide cybersecurity skills gap today, and by helping students with the program’s hands-on cybersecurity training, we’re helping to equip the next generation of the cybersecurity workforce,” said Joe Levy, president and chief technology officer at Sophos. “Our research shows that attackers are executing their attack lifecycles in two fewer days than previously measured. That’s 48 hours less time to detect and respond, making adaptive technologies like Intercept X a critical piece of protection to minimize damage and costs. We’re proud to collectively invest in improving cybersecurity outcomes by providing Cyberdome students with access to Sophos’ industry-best endpoint security for learning critical skills and protecting organizations from attacks.”
Cyberdome students will leverage Sophos’ technology in live, real-world environments through internships provided by grants from the Idaho Global Entrepreneurship Mission’s Higher Education Research Council (IGEM-HERC) and Idaho’s Workforce Development Council.
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Media Contact
Mike Sharp, director of media relations, Boise State University, (208) 426-1597, mikesharp@boisestate.edu
About Boise State University
Boise State provides an innovative, transformative, and equitable educational environment that prepares students for success and advances Idaho and the world. Serving more than 32,000 students annually, Boise State is proud to be powered by creativity and innovation, receiving national recognition as one of the most innovative universities in the country. Located in Idaho’s capital city, the university has a growing research agenda and plays a crucial role in the region’s knowledge economy and famed quality of life. In the past 10 years, the university has quadrupled the number of doctoral degrees and doubled its master’s degree offerings. Learn more at BoiseState.edu.
About Sophos
Sophos is a worldwide leader and innovator of advanced cybersecurity solutions, including Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and incident response services and a broad portfolio of endpoint, network, email, and cloud security technologies that help organizations defeat cyberattacks. As one of the largest pure-play cybersecurity providers, Sophos defends more than 500,000 organizations and more than 100 million users globally from active adversaries, ransomware, phishing, malware, and more. Sophos’ services and products connect through its cloud-based Sophos Central management console and are powered by Sophos X-Ops, the company’s cross-domain threat intelligence unit. Sophos X-Ops intelligence optimizes the entire Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which includes a centralized data lake that leverages a rich set of open APIs available to customers, partners, developers, and other cybersecurity and information technology vendors. Sophos provides cybersecurity-as-a-service to organizations needing fully-managed, turnkey security solutions. Customers can also manage their cybersecurity directly with Sophos’ security operations platform or use a hybrid approach by supplementing their in-house teams with Sophos’ services, including threat hunting and remediation. Sophos sells through reseller partners and managed service providers (MSPs) worldwide. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at https://www.sophos.com/.