“I really appreciate you taking this balanced approach to security and user experience. We cannot take a heavy-handed approach to security, that simply won’t work, we need to be very deliberate and ensure we take everyone on the journey.”
– JOEL REEVES: CIO
SUPPORTING 60,000 USERS AND 180,000 DEVICES
Securing and supporting such a diverse environment would be challenging even for an organization that has centralized command-and-control and a top-down hierarchy. However, universities are the exact opposite, so the security challenge is actually much larger.
A PRACTICAL AND ACTIONABLE PLAN
Using the 365 Accelerator, Mobile Mentor performed an assessment of UT’s current environment in two workstreams: endpoint security and employee experience. Then they worked with the IT leadership team to build a 3-phase deployment plan with multiple iterations to refine the actions.
BALANCE OF SECURITY AND EXPERIENCE ACHIEVED FOR A DIVERSE GROUP
Mobile Mentor presented the findings and the proposed roadmap to the CIO, CISO and the IT leadership team. Findings included benchmark scores, peer comparisons and an exciting vision statement that reflected the ambition of the university and the capabilities in the Microsoft 365 licenses. The roadmap defined the journey as a series of incremental gains in both endpoint security and employee experience, running in parallel.
“We really wanted to ensure that we had identified the 10 most important actions in Phase 1 and a logical sequence for those actions. We know that if we get consensus on the plan, then execution is much easier.”
— Denis O’Shea: Principal Consultant at Mobile Mentor
About The University of Tennessee
UT is a highly diverse organization with seven campuses, eleven colleges and people in 95 counties across the state. Founded in 1794, UT serves the state by educating its citizens, enhancing its culture and making a difference in people’s lives through research & service.
