Podcast: Hear University CIO Discuss New NET+ Palo Alto Program

By Sean O'Brien, Internet2 NET+ Program Director

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

In a recent interview, Charlie McMahon, interim CIO of Stony Brook University, talks about the new NET+ Palo Alto Networks program and how that is impacting the university’s security posture.

In this 13-minute podcast, hear Charlie share:

1. The number-one benefit of deploying Cortex XDR
2. How Stony Brook frames security to cut cost and complexity
3. How institutions can leverage the power of the community with the Internet2 NET+ program

“[Internet2 is] a place where we recognize the value of the entire community and there are mechanisms to let you participate at whatever level you are able to based on the time and energy you’ve got available to put into it.”

— Charlie McMahon

Also learn more about how the Internet2 NET+ service evaluation committee members work with the vendors and review their offerings, deconstruct them, and then put them back together in a way that makes sense for higher education.

Podcast Summary
0:54   Palo Alto Networks’ perspective on Internet2
2:48   History of security work in higher education
4:34   The challenges of VPN access
6:26   Integrating technologies
8:19   Internet2’s NET+ program
9:20   The impact of security automation on headcount
10:17   Advice for smaller colleges and universities
11:29   How Palo Alto Networks supports higher education

‘Behind the Scenes’ Look

Hunter Ely, Security Strategist at Palo Alto Networks, gives us a “behind the scenes” look at how Palo Alto Networks serves the Internet2 community.

With budgets tight, colleges and universities are looking to maximize investments. When multiple universities work together to negotiate contract pricing, establishing terms and conditions that fit higher education needs, colleges and universities can leverage community scale to streamline access to cybersecurity solutions.

Charlie has found that Stony Brook can not only gain great visibility into their devices and how they behave, but they can set up fairly sophisticated rule sets that detect anomalies and act on them without human intervention. Further in working with the higher education community, Charlie sees additional value: 

“By participating in the Internet2 community, you may be able to add that one piece of expertise that nobody else is bringing to the table. You certainly need to have your voice heard so that inside our [higher ed] community, you don’t get drowned out by the bigger players, the more dominant players, the players with bigger technology budgets. [Internet2 is] a place where we recognize the value of the entire community and there are mechanisms to let you participate at whatever level you are able to based on the time and energy you’ve got available to put into it.”

Please reach out to the NET+ team to learn more about the NET+ Palo Alto program or to be connected to Palo Alto sales.

In case you missed it:

Locking Down Information Management Security on Campus highlights work on the development of the NET+ Palo Alto offering.

Internet2 NET+ Palo Alto Networks Community Call Recap provides a recap of a community call focused on solving for cloud-native security in and out of the cloud.