William Woods University Resolves User Issues in 15 Minutes and Mitigates Damage from Ransomware

5,000

Business users

15 minutes

To resolve typical user issues

9 TB of data

Reorganized and secured

Netwrix Auditor has literally made my administration life easier. I can find an issue and resolve it in 15 minutes or less, whereas before it was at least 15 minutes just to get to the point that I could start reading the logs. With just two of us on the infrastructure site, I always want administration to be as simple as possible, because I manage way too many things. A product that can make my life easier is money well spent.

Robert Harrison, Server Administrator, William Woods University

Challenge

Ensure that over 5,000 students and employees have seamless access to systems, applications and files.
Gain visibility into core systems, such as Active Directory and file shares, to lift the burden of inefficient log monitoring and be able to efficiently resolve user issues.

Thanks to the software, we eliminated excessive permissions and moved stale data to a protected location. Thus, we reduced the risk of ransomware attacks, which we have already faced once. The data is not overexposed now and people have access only on the need-to-know basis.

Robert Harrison, Server Administrator,
William Woods University

Netwrix Solution

Robert carefully evaluated several solutions and Netwrix Auditor proved to be the easiest to deploy and use, and had a simple and reasonable licensing model. He also liked its modularity, so if he decides to monitor more systems, he will just pay for the additional license without having to buy a completely different suite of applications and spend a lot of time on setup.

Resolving user issues faster. Common user problems, such as account lockouts after multiple failed logons, can now be investigated and resolved very quickly. Before, Robert regularly received calls on these issues, but now his colleagues from the helpdesk can use Netwrix Auditor to figure it out on their own.
Optimizing file storage. The university’s shares contain nine terabytes of data and millions of files. Netwrix Auditor enabled Robert to clean up all this data for better organization and performance. Plus, the software detected a poorly programmed application that made 6,000 changes to file shares daily instead of the average 10, which was degrading system performance.
Maintaining the least privilege principle. With visibility into AD and file servers, Robert identified accounts with too many permissions to files they were not even using and removed those excessive rights. This improved data security and helped the university align its security posture with best practices.

Key Benefits

Made IT operations more efficient
Optimized use of storage
Reduced risk of data exposure

Netwrix Applications

Customer Profile

William Woods University is a private, liberal arts university that was founded in 1870 in Fulton, Missouri, U.S., and offers specialized undergraduate, graduate and online degrees. It has more than 3,500 students, including 1,100 traditional undergraduates from the United States and 24 other countries. William Woods graduates fill positions at Disney, 3M, Coca-Cola, UPS, HewlettPackard and many other major corporations.

Customer: William Woods University

Industry: Education

Website: www.williamwoods.edu