Customer Overview
The University of Tampa is a higher education institution supporting a large population of students, faculty, and staff. Its IT organization manages a sizable Active Directory environment that underpins critical academic and administrative systems.
Challenge
Like many higher education institutions, the University of Tampa operates in a highly dynamic environment, with frequent onboarding and offboarding of users across students, faculty, and administrative staff. This creates constant change within Active Directory, increasing both operational complexity and security risk.
The IT team needed to address several key challenges:
- Limited visibility into AD changes, making it difficult to determine who made changes and whether they were authorized
- Audit and compliance pressures that required reliable, audit-ready reporting
- Risk of misconfiguration or privilege misuse across a large user base
- Lack of a streamlined way to restore Active Directory objects in the event of accidental or malicious changes
- The need to support a large and growing population of students and staff without increasing administrative overhead
Additionally, the university needed to align any solution with budget constraints, requiring a flexible approach that could deliver immediate value while fitting within financial expectations.
Solution
The University of Tampa implemented the Cygna Labs Security & Compliance platform to improve visibility into Active Directory and file system activity, strengthen oversight of privileged access, and enhance recovery preparedness. By combining auditing, entitlement management, and recovery capabilities within a single platform, the IT team gained greater insight into changes across the environment while adding the ability to quickly restore Active Directory objects and configurations when needed.
Implementation Highlights
- Efficient procurement and onboarding following quote approval and licensing processes
- Coverage aligned across the university’s full user population
- Integration into existing IT operations with minimal disruption
- Flexible commercial approach to align with the university’s budget and approval process
Outcomes
Enhanced Visibility and Audit Readiness:
- Centralized tracking of changes across Active Directory and file systems
- Improved ability to investigate and respond to security events
- Better support for audit and compliance requirements
Stronger Security Controls:
- Faster identification of unauthorized or high-risk changes
- Greater oversight of privileged access and entitlements
Recovery and Resilience:
- Ability to roll back unintended or malicious changes
- Reduced operational risk associated with Active Directory incidents
Scalable for Growth:
- Supports a large and dynamic identity base
- Flexible enough to scale with future growth
Summary
The University of Tampa strengthened its Active Directory security posture by leveraging Cygna Auditor and Recovery to deliver comprehensive visibility, improved control, and reliable recovery capabilities—ensuring operational efficiency and long-term resilience.
