Darktrace, the leader in Enterprise Immune System technology, has today announced that the United World College of South East Asia (UWCSEA) has deployed its self-learning technology to catch sophisticated cyber-threats able to silently infiltrate its growing network. The school enriches students’ learning experience by providing every student with their own device. In addition, older students and parents are able to use personal devices on the network. Whilst this open approach supports learning, it simultaneously creates more network vulnerabilities, adding pressure on the school’s lean infrastructure team responsible for protecting users and sensitive data.

UWCSEA is one of the most well-respected schools in the Asia-Pacific region, providing a holistic, values-based K-12 education across two campuses, with over 5,500 students and 1,000 staff. As a leading educational institution, UWCSEA encourages its students to embrace technology and digital applications to facilitate their learning. However, with more than 200 applications and several thousand devices in the hands of students, UWCSEA’s vast network is exposed to risk at any point. In the face of a rapidly-evolving threat landscape, UWCSEA decided to deploy Darktrace’s unique self-learning technology for cyber defense to spot silent and stealthy threats which could infiltrate the network via a student’s phone, laptop or IoT device.

UWCSEA prides itself on educating through technology, without compromising the safety of students and their data. Our open-access policy for the school’s community has ultimately increased the complexity of our digital infrastructure, but Darktrace gives us complete network visibility, allowing us to spot emerging threats before they become serious,” said Ben Morgan, Director of IT, UWCSEA. “Artificial intelligence for security is no longer an option – it’s a must-have. It is simply not possible for small IT teams in organizations like ours to keep up with all the new threats and sophisticated threat-actors on their own. Darktrace has delivered on the promise of AI in cyber security and allows us to stay abreast of this new landscape while lessening the burden on our staff overall.”

Shortly after installation, Darktrace alerted the security team to a serious anomaly within its network – a PC had been infected with malware – and no other tool from their security stack had reported the issue. The team was able to immediately take action and focus on remediating the problem before the infection could spread.

We are thrilled that UWCSEA has selected Darktrace to keep its students, parents and staff protected,” commented Sanjay Aurora, Managing Director, Asia Pacific at Darktrace. “The move towards machine learning technology is paramount for any organization in the fight against today’s evolving threat. By securing the network from the inside out, we are now catching advanced threats that the school’s perimeter defenses are powerless against.”