US School District Improves PCI-DSS Compliance Using Segmentation

This large school district in the United States serves more than 180,000 students annually.

The challenge

The district determined that it needed to take additional steps to control access to its critical financial application or risk failing internal audits for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance.

Granular visibility and segmentation policies would reduce the risk of noncompliance and improve security posture overall. Therefore, IT leaders within the school began the search for the right segmentation solution.

The solution

The school district evaluated its existing solution investments, as well as other new potential solutions on the market. Ultimately, the Akamai Guardicore Segmentation platform best addressed its requirements.

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation provided granular east-west traffic visibility and had easy-to-use segmentation features. In addition, the platform’s software-defined approach meant that no network or application changes would be required to roll out security policies.

A third-party consulting firm also took part in evaluating Akamai Guardicore Segmentation in a lab environment. After the evaluation process went well, the school district purchased the product and proceeded with segmenting its critical financial application.

Granular visibility and policies

With Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, the school district can view east-west traffic activity in detail and control access to assets with granular segmentation policies.

By leveraging this functionality, the security team was able to clearly see activity related to the critical application. It could then put appropriate policies in place to meet PCI-DSS technical requirements — without any business disruption.

Protection for critical assets

Though the primary objective of the school district was to secure the financial application and its data, the district’s IT leaders have larger long-term plans for Akamai Guardicore Segmentation in their security strategy.

The district’s CISO explained, “The reason I picked Akamai Guardicore Segmentation was that I view the platform as a security product and not just an operational tool.”

The platform boasts a broader ability to prevent the lateral movement of bad actors who may compromise the school district’s environment, including sensitive student data. After first ringfencing financial applications with granular policies, the district plans to add additional layers of security to less-critical assets.
This will minimize the impact of any future breaches.

Threat detection and response

Additionally, using the platform’s unique threat-hunting capabilities, the district expects to be able to detect and respond to possible threats more quickly than ever.