Student-Powered SOCs
Safeguarding Public Sector
Digital Infrastructure
Developed in public-private partnership with LSU and our technology partners Splunk and AWS, our framework for tapping into tomorrow’s emerging workforce is fast becoming the standard for public sector security. We aim to show you why, and how, in this guide on student-powered SOCs.
Take the Guide With You
Sounding the Alarm: The Need for a Unified Front
Splunk’s Americas SVP and General Manager, Frank Dimina, said it best: “Cybersecurity is an arms race.” Nowhere is this more strongly felt than in the public sector.
Eroding budgets and a growing talent gap as the public sector becomes a prime target for cybercriminals have made cybersecurity a mission-critical imperative. It’s time we answered the call for a better way to protect the integrity of our social institutions. And it starts by training the next generation of talent: students.
But rather than work in silos to mitigate the latest phishing scam or ransomware attack, we need to take the offensive and work together. It’s this philosophy of a unified front that underpins TekStream’s pioneering approach to whole-of-state cybersecurity and the student-powered SOC model.
Understanding What’s at Stake
Budgets are often cited as the primary barrier for improving public sector cyber defenses. After all, running 24/7 threat monitoring on best-in-class technology can get expensive — particularly when competing with the private sector over a shrinking talent pool. But this is not a problem the public sector can buy its way out of.
Federal grants and funding provide little cover if you lack the people to run and operate the cybersecurity program. With over 900,000 cybersecurity roles currently open in the U.S., the talent gap must be addressed first to secure the digital ecosystem of public institutions.
“One of the problems we commonly hear from state agencies is that they lack budget. They have some federal funding, but cybersecurity costs around technology, people and processes can quickly add up. When you add the workforce problem, the people who are available are very expensive, and public sector entities can’t defend themselves.”
Judd Robins, Executive Vice President
TekStream
Removing the Roadblock
Solving the need for well-trained security professionals will take more than a formal education. AI has reduced the need for entry-level cyber analyst roles, making it difficult for recent graduates to successfully enter the workforce.
The solution we have developed with LSU bridges the gap. It takes the concept of the traditional tiered curriculum and enhances it with just-in-time training. Students work as TekStream employees and gain real-world cybersecurity incident response and engineering experience using Splunk SIEM/SOAR technology built on top of AWS infrastructure.
Equipped with a dashboard of actual events and activities completed in the security operations center (SOC), and a higher level of skills that aligns closer with growing market demand, students can quickly enter the workforce after graduation as mid-level cybersecurity engineers.
“By giving students hands-on experience during their time in school, they’re graduating with the skill sets needed to enter the workforce. It’s a faster path to productivity. We’re also addressing the industry talent gap, which is so incredibly challenging right now.”
Mary Lou Prevost, Group Vice President
State, Local Government and Education U.S.
Splunk
How It Works:
The Student-Powered SOCs
Model at Play
Under a whole-of-state approach, each participating institution has a role to play. They leverage each other’s strengths and services to provide a unified front against cybercriminals. Higher education institutions provide the talent pipeline and the sandbox that powers the shared SOC.
State and federal agencies supply the connectivity and funding that enables proactive, shared threat response across all participating institutions. And private sector institutions provide the technology and framework to make the model work.
It’s a flexible template that inherently addresses growing financial, time and resource barriers that have historically held the public sector back in regard to cybersecurity.
“Having TekStream as a partner gives us a different model than a traditional student-run SOC. It removes the burden of how we’re going to deploy Splunk because it’s something TekStream does every day for other customers. We are increasing our cyber defenses by using our state network LONI, which connects all of our higher-ed institutions…we have onboarded more than 20 schools in under a year with this model.”
Craig Woolley, CIO
Louisiana State University
Cost Efficiency at Scale
The whole-of-state and student-powered SOC concept is not new. What makes this approach novel is the investment model we have created with our technology partners, Splunk and AWS. Rather than a locked-in approach, the goal is to give public sector institutions control of their program.
As students become more proficient in identifying and resolving threats, the cost and level of our involvement diminish, resulting in lower costs and complete ownership of the program in the long term. Participating entities also gain additional cost savings by reducing the number of required licenses under a shared SOC management approach.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever met anyone willing to say, ‘You hire your students, we’ll write down your costs, and still take on the liability of protecting you.’ I don’t know anyone else willing to do that in this industry.”
Ed Wozencroft, Vice President for Digital Strategy & CIO
New Jersey Institute of Technology
The Power of a Unified Approach
The true value of public-private partnerships is in safeguarding our digital infrastructure. Our student-powered, whole-of-state approach enables public sector entities to protect their data while benefiting from shared intelligence and an enhanced security posture.
The framework we have developed leverages automation and threat intelligence to provide real-time threat monitoring and rapid incident response. It also powers collaboration and continued resilience by creating a growing, best-in-class library of assets accessible to all entities in the ecosystem.
It’s about enabling each other to evolve as threat actors become more sophisticated and new technologies emerge.
“By leveraging their relationships with Splunk and AWS, TekStream can provide state entities with end-to-end incident response capabilities. This integrated approach significantly shortens the meantime to detect and recover from cyber incidents, a crucial metric in minimizing the impact of security breaches.”
Valerie Singer, General Manager of Global Education
AWS
Student-Powered SOCs: A Model That Works With You
The speed and sophistication of cyberattacks is accelerating. With so much at stake and millions of dollars at risk, it’s not a matter of if but when a cyberattack will occur. We created our whole-of-state framework with LSU to serve as a template that can be replicated across the public sector.
Since its inception, several institutions like New Jersey Institute of Technology, Austin Independent School District and others, have adopted our approach and student-powered SOC model to enhance their security posture. You can, too. Get in touch to develop your blueprint for better protecting your citizens and assets.
