Apogee, the trusted strategic managed technology services partner to higher education, announced Apogee Cloud and Security Professional Services to help colleges and universities struggling with gaps in talent or expertise improve IT and data center efficiency and enhance institutional resilience. From cloud readiness and migration projects to disaster recovery and information security planning, Apogee brings the expertise, tools, and processes higher education IT teams need to accelerate cloud adoption and strengthen their institutional security posture.
“Embracing the cloud and hybrid cloud can create new opportunities, and protecting critical data can minimize the impact of cyberattack. But many colleges and universities are struggling with limited cloud and security expertise and little time to devote to these strategies,” said Dave Fuhrmann, Apogee vice president of cloud services and security solutions. “I’m elated that today we are able to provide our institutional clients with the professional services needed to forge a path to the cloud or hybrid cloud and to enhance the efficiency, security, and performance of campus applications, data, and data center infrastructure.”
CIO INFLUENCE: HTC Global Services and Azentio Software Confirm Strategic Partnership to Offer Next-Generation Digital BFSI Solutions
Cloud Professional Services
Apogee Cloud Professional Services help campus IT teams create new avenues for efficiency, cost-savings, and innovation by closing gaps in in-house cloud and data center expertise to accelerate digital transformation initiatives. These professional services include:
- Cloud Readiness Assessments create a mission-based cloud or hybrid cloud strategy and address staffing, budgeting, security, and planning parameters.
- Cloud Migration Services streamline migration of ERP, identity management, finance, and scheduling applications to the cloud.
- Application Modernization Services optimize campus applications and include code templates, starter templates, system containerization and serverless computing, and process automation.
- Disaster Recovery Assessments protect campuses from data loss, minimize downtime and financial repercussions, and enhance institutional resilience and reputation by defining recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO), creating a failover and fallback process runbook, and simulating an outage disaster recovery (DR) test.
- End-User Computing Virtualization Services enable IT teams to easily configure desktops to provide anywhere access to coursework or applications, ease endpoint management, enhance scalability, and save money in hardware and maintenance costs.
For more than 20 years, College of the Sequoias had relied on the Ellucian Banner Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to handle its many vital workflows, including human resources, college finances, student information, and financial aid. However, the on-premises data center on which Banner was running had its limitations, and the old hardware could not keep up with the college’s growing demands.
The college chose Apogee to help migrate its ERP system to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud.
CIO INFLUENCE: Exascend Launches Industrial-Grade SD and MicroSD Cards to Meet Growing IoT Edge Storage Demand
“It seemed logical to me to make the move to AWS and adopt a system that was much easier to manage—one that didn’t require an investment in hardware every five years,” said Glen Profeta, chief technology officer at College of the Sequoias. “Our team has the confidence and ability to innovate rapidly in a way that was not feasible when we were on premises. We’re excited to discover what else is possible with the cloud.”
Security Professional Services
Apogee Security Professional Services help campuses fortify their IT security posture by protecting critical student and research data and minimizing the impact of cyberattack. Apogee experts help prepare campus IT teams to thwart bad actors, stay on top of an evolving threat landscape, and proactively manage through security incidents to maximize infrastructure resilience and protect the campus reputation. These professional services include:
- Security assessments and plans that conform to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)Safeguards Rule and ensure campuses remain in compliance with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). Key actions include:
- Identification of higher education threat actors;
- Identification of threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs);
- TTPs risk-ranked and mapped to NIST SP800-53 (National Institute of Standards and Technology) controls; and
- Documented risk register with NIST SP800-53 controls focused on residual risk (i.e., original risk less the risk mitigated by current controls).
- Incident response programs targeted to specific information security incidents like ransomware or email security breach. Components of the plan include:
- Response policies, plans, and procedures to remove guesswork and ensure appropriate and timely action;
- Programs by incident type including ransomware, email security breach, malware, denial of service, and more;
- IT Staff training and response plan testing; and
- Schedules for review.
CIO INFLUENCE: CSI Adds IT Governance to Advisory Services Offering as Cybersecurity, Regulatory Landscapes Grow in Complexity
[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]
