Transcript
systems every day to learn, teach, conduct research, and stay connected. Behind these systems is a team responsible not only for keeping learning services available, but also for keeping the university's digital environment secure. At Universiti Malaysia Saba, one of our biggest challenges is balancing openness with cybersecurity. As a university, we encourage collaborations, accessibility, and knowledge sharing. Students, researchers, and external communities interact with our system every day, but this openness also naturally increases our cybersecurity exposure. So the challenge is finding the right balance between protecting students' records, staff information, and sensitive research data, and how we can keep our digital environment accessible at all times. This also means ensuring our cybersecurity controls align with Malaysia's cybersecurity and data-protecting expectations. And this is including the Cybersecurity Act 2024 and also PDPA. From a technology evaluation perspective, our focus was not simply to purchase more cybersecurity products, but to enhance our operational capabilities. We already have several security systems in place, including firewalls, endpoint protection, and network monitoring. These systems generate a lot of alerts and security information, but the question is how we can understand what really matters and quickly take action on that information and more effectively. This led us to consider MDR, a more practical model that could strengthen our security operations without investigating in full 24x7 SoC, including advanced platforms and up to five additional antenna hires. That would be a major commitment and cost for the university. We looked at several MDR services from leading vendors and local MSSP. In the end, SEM4Athena MDR stood out because it provides the right fit for our requirements. Overall, SEM4Athena MDR gives us the right balance of capability, support, deployment speed, and value for the investment. Before implementing SEM4Athena MDR, our security operations were heavily manual and lack consistency. We had around 90 IT offices and technicians, but only three dedicated to cybersecurity. During peak operational periods, our environment could generate around 1,000 logs per hour. With a small cybersecurity team, it was not possible to review everything manually. For real threats, our team had to manually collect and correlate logs from multiple systems to understand what happened. Depending on the case, investigation could take weeks and in some cases up to one month. Before, we had a clear picture of what happened. After implementing SEM4Athena MDR, the biggest improvement is that our team no longer had to start from raw alerts. The MDR team analyzed all the security events. First, and only escalated verified threats or incidents to us. This reduced noise and freed up our team to focus on higher value works. 24x7 monitoring is also important for us. Previously, we did not have enough resources to monitor continuously outside office hours, during weekends, or on holidays. With SEM4Athena MDR, we now have consistent monitoring, containment support, and escalation through instant messaging or phone calls. So we know what is happening and can decide the next step even when we are not in the office. One of the best outcomes of adopting SEM4Athena MDR is that we now have fewer emergency cybersecurity escalations and management meetings. For me personally, no news means good news. It gives us greater confidence that the university environment is being monitored continuously and not proactively. Cybersecurity investment is not only about financial ROI. It is also about protecting operational continuity, institutional reputation, and ensuring the university can continue serving students and researchers securely. By working together with SEM4Athena MDR, we were able to strengthen our cybersecurity readiness much faster. For University Malaysia Sabah, cybersecurity is not a one-time project. It is a continuous journey of strengthening resilience, improving visibility, and protecting the future of digital education.
