Security operations centre

As technology becomes more complex and threats more sophisticated, it’s a challenge for even the largest organisations to keep their online environment secure.

The proliferation of digital devices, the rise in digital collaboration and the growth of cloud-hosted solutions mean you need a specialist team – acting at the network level – to help you stay in control.

That’s why, as part of your Jisc membership, you have access to the expertise of our security operations centre – at no extra cost if you’re an eligible organisation.

How the security operations centre works

Consisting of the Jisc Computer Security and Incident Response Team (CSIRT), alongside security analysts and specialists, our security operations centre detects and defends against thousands of attacks every year on the Janet Network.

We help protect you against major issues – such as denial of service attacks, confidentiality breaches and loss of data – which could damage your business and your reputation.

How we can help

We defend the Janet Network

We defend the world-class Janet Network with a combination of protection, monitoring and incident response – to help you make the most of Jisc membership.

Protection

A network of Janet’s size and complexity can’t easily or cost-effectively be protected by any single, off-the-shelf security product.

Instead, we draw on a range of market-leading solutions – such as Arbor Network’s protection against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks – combined with in-house tools developed to suit the needs of our members.

Monitoring

We monitor the Janet Network in a targeted way, using specialist anomaly detection tools, which we develop and maintain in-house.

This means that in some cases, we’re able to spot a threat on your network before you notice it yourself.

Incident response

If you find yourself facing a security incident, the Jisc CSIRT specialists are here to help.

We’ll work with you to investigate the issue and help you recover as quickly as possible, providing one-to-one advice as we do.

This not only helps you get your systems back up and running; it could also help reduce shorter-term security risks.

We help deter against threats

To help investigate and deter attacks against the sector, we share information with security teams, including other CSIRTs and government agencies – for example, via the national Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership (CiSP).

To help create a secure online working environment for members, we also share knowledge and advice with the research and education community, including Jisc members – sharing details of threats and co-ordinating information across the sector.

For example, we run a security mailing list, to share information and provide a forum for discussions on security issues.

We are also part of the global education and security community, and have developed strong relationships across the world.

We develop ways to improve security

As attacks against networks grow more sophisticated, we are continuing to develop ways to help the research and education community. These methods include:

• Services that directly protect your organisation, such as our DDoS mitigation solutions
• Consultancy to help you improve your security posture
• Training courses that help you improve your cyber security and information security management – in conjunction with Jisc’s training team
• Publishing online information and articles on security – to help members develop their own security skills and in response to active campaigns.

Find out more

To find out more about the security operations centre, contact your relationship manager.