Wellington College

Overview

As one of the UK’s leading independent schools, Wellington College aims to set the highest standards in all areas—  including IT security. Facing a rising tide of ever-more  sophisticated cyberattacks targeting the education sector,  the College worked with Meridian to strengthen its security  strategy with 24/7 monitoring and access to expert resources. 

Business Challenge

Over the past decade, UK schools have seen a  dramatic change in the IT security threat landscape. Today’s cybercriminals aren’t just individuals sending  out random phishing emails—they’re organised, well funded groups that make direct, targeted attacks on  teachers, parents, and even students. 

The problem is endemic. According to research by  the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Grid for Learning, 78% of schools have experienced  at least one type of cyber incident, 21% have fallen  victim to malware and/or ransomware attacks, and 18% have lost access to important information. 

As one of the most innovative and best-resourced  independent schools in the country, Wellington College has a larger IT department and a stronger  security posture than most of its peers. Even so,  budgets will not stretch to a dedicated in-house IT security team. Until recently, responsibility for  monitoring alerts and reviewing dashboards fell on  just two people: the College’s network manager and  its Director of IT Services and Development, Tony Whelton. 

Tony recalls: “We had tried many different proactive  security monitoring tools, but they were all  designed for larger IT security teams and very time  consuming to configure for our needs. We spent  hours reviewing dashboards and trying to keep on  top of all the alerts, but there was so much noise  that was almost impossible to review everything in  time to make a difference.” 

He adds: “The question was: how do we cope with  threats of increasing scale and sophistication,  without spending up to six figures on yet more  complex security tools?”

Solution

Tony recognised that the real problem wasn’t tooling—  it was expertise. He began looking for a supplier that  could help augment his in-house team by providing  security monitoring and analysis as a service.

“Meridian was the only supplier that offered a light touch solution that would give us access to a high end security operations team without spending  thousands,” he says. “They offered us a one-month  trial, which was risk-free because there was no  upfront cost. That made it a pretty easy decision!” 

As part of the service, Meridian provides regular reviews  to highlight zero-cost improvements to the College’s  security strategy. The immediate impact was to cut  down the number of alerts and dashboards that needed  to be monitored by aggregating all security events  in Microsoft Sentinel—a tool that the College already  owned as part of its Microsoft 365 Education licence. 

“Most schools already have access to Microsoft Sentinel, but they don’t use it to its full potential,” says Tony. “Like most proactive security monitoring tools,  it’s designed for security experts and complicated to  set up correctly. Meridian provided the expertise we  needed to tailor Sentinel to our needs—and we started  seeing the value almost immediately.” 

In addition to these advisory and implementation  services, the Meridian contract also includes 24/7  monitoring of the College’s security dashboards, alerts  and logs, and direct access to expert security analysts. Tony also has a biweekly call with the Meridian team to  discuss key alerts and recommendations.

“Meridian’s light-touch approach is perfect for us as a  busy IT team,” says Tony. “We speak regularly enough  to get value from their advice, but not so often that  it takes focus from the other areas of our job. And  more importantly, it gives us peace of mind, because  we know that if something does require immediate  attention, Meridian will flag it immediately.”

Customer Benefits

Based on Meridian’s expert security advice, Wellington College has been able to boost its Microsoft Secure Score—Microsoft’s standardised  representation of an organisation’s security  posture—by a massive 50%. 

“When I’ve mentioned our Microsoft Security  score to other schools, they’ve been blown  away,” says Tony. “But with the right advice from  Meridian, I think most schools could improve  dramatically just by making small incremental  changes to their security setup.” 

With Meridian handling the day-to-day security  monitoring, Tony’s team also saves a significant  amount of time. “I used to spend five hours a week  reviewing dashboards and alerts,” says Tony.  “That work has now been completely taken off my  shoulders, so I can focus on other things.”

The IT team has also been impressed by the  short time-to-value Meridian delivered—especially  compared to the on-premise security tools that it  had tried in the past. “Meridian got our Office365  data into Sentinel in about an hour, and we had a  complete view of our whole security landscape  in less than two weeks, with no up-front  investment,” says Tony. “Compared to a large  software licence with a three-year support and  maintenance contract, Meridian’s service costs  us next to nothing.” 

Now that it has strengthened its own IT security, Wellington College wants to help make the whole  education sector more resilient against cybercrime. “We’re keen to share what we’ve learned to show  other schools what they can do to continuously  improve their IT security,” concludes Tony. “In  our experience, Meridian is absolutely the right  partner to help them on that journey.”