Grand Canyon Education (GCE) is a shared services provider that serves colleges and universities. The company employs thousands of people with revenues near $1 Billion. GCE’s high visibility as a cyber and technology education leader and its relationships with respected affiliations were key drivers behind its focus to stay ahead of a rapidly evolving threat landscape.

Grand Canyon Education security team’s primary goals were to reduce the attack surface of the organization, elevate the efficacy of security controls, and focus remediation efforts on critical risks. To achieve these goals, GCE knew it needed expanded visibility and dynamic discovery of its assets since growth by any method—organic or via acquisition—can lead to the accumulation of information systems that did not evolve through the normal established process. Finding new and acquired assets was not enough; what was needed was continuous attack surface mapping and vulnerability analysis.

The GCE team understood how legacy applications and infrastructures created a significant attack surface that malicious actors may attempt to exploit. Time is always a factor in preventing cyberattacks that may disrupt business operations and services. Recent attacks utilizing Ransomware as a Service or Affiliate models are cascading into the domain of conventional cybercrime via highly optimized distribution and information sharing models.

With a dynamic and rapidly unfolding threat landscape, the GCE team sought a solution that would automate preventative activities, while providing complete visibility over the full external attack surface. The team needed a solution that was simple, intuitive and easy to leverage across the entire enterprise.