Strengthening cyber posture and evidencing resilience at Glasgow Kelvin College

Glasgow Kelvin serves around 15,000 students, offering a range of courses from introductory certificates and vocational qualifications through to Higher National Certificate level. Operating across three main campuses and around 30 community settings with more than 400 staff and thousands of devices, the college has a large and technically complex IT estate. Maintaining an overview of this environment was a significant challenge for the internal IT team.

Awareness of the growing threat from cyber attacks had increased following incidents elsewhere in Scotland, including at Dundee and Angus College. Cyber security had also been identified as a board priority during audits.

As a result, the IT team was looking for a security Information and event management (SIEM) solution that could handle the millions of logs generated each week and provide better intelligence than manual processing could offer.

The college needed a solution capable of analysing large volumes of security logs and identifying potential cyber security threats that required investigation by staff. Cost effectiveness was also an important consideration.

Following a comprehensive evaluation of a wide range of providers and options, the college, already a Jisc member and connected to the Janet Network, selected our cyber security threat monitoring – initially taking the service for a one-year period.

"What Jisc provided was an offering that struck the right balance between cost and technical capability. That's what we needed, and it's why we settled on Jisc as the provider of a solution that was right for us."

—Jason Quinn, assistant principal for digital and information services, Glasgow Kelvin College

Oversight through a single pane of glass

Our cyber security threat monitoring is an enterprise-grade solution that automatically monitors and analyses security logs, with alerts reviewed and triaged by security analysts before relevant alerts and insights are provided to the IT team for action. Tuned to detect a wide range of threats, including those specific to education providers, it enables the team to view the entire IT estate through a single portal and focus their time on the issues that matter.

Vital intelligence to strengthen cyber security

The implementation of our cyber security threat monitoring brought an unexpected additional benefit for the college: identifying a previously unnoticed vulnerability.

The process of implementing and running the service highlighted a misconfiguration in the college's conditional access policies, which meant they were not sufficiently hardened against fraudulent authentication attempts. The team was able to update the system quickly and close the gap.

Protection for key accounts

Glasgow Kelvin's our cyber security threat monitoring service is configured to pay particular attention to the types of accounts frequently targeted by malicious actors, including those belonging to the leadership team and finance staff, who may be vulnerable to fraudulent payment requests.

During summer 2026, one such attempt triggered a response from our computer security incident response team (CSIRT), which sends alerts when suspicious behaviour is detected, including outside normal working hours.

“Jisc's cyber security threat monitoring gives us visibility across our entire IT estate, highlighting the threats that are relevant to us. It helps us cut through the noise and get straight to the things that matter. That's the real time-saver for us. For us, it's absolutely mission critical.”

—Jason Quinn

Detecting risky behaviour and unauthorised use

With such a large number of students, staff and devices using its network, our cyber security threat monitoring plays an important role in identifying behaviour that could leave the college vulnerable to attack.

For example, students using virtual private networks (VPNs) in an attempt to bypass network controls are identified and flagged. This allows the IT team to check that no security breaches have occurred and raise the issue with the user, explaining the risks and reinforcing best practice.

A developing relationship

The team at Glasgow Kelvin receives monthly reports summarising the number of incidents flagged, the types of logs highlighted and the amount of data used. Quarterly reviews with a dedicated service manager provide a further opportunity to assess the service and discuss any issues.

Having chosen to retain our cyber security threat monitoring, now in its third year, the college is also exploring other Jisc services and ways to deepen the partnership.

Providing reassurance at board level

The board at Glasgow Kelvin is highly engaged in cyber security, recognising it as a leadership responsibility. Using our cyber security threat monitoring enables the IT team to demonstrate value for money and show how the service contributes to meeting Cyber Essentials standards and protecting data. A strong cyber security audit in 2026 provided further evidence of the college's cyber resilience to the board.

“Jisc is funded to support the sector, and that comes through in the way it works with us. There's a non-competitive element to the relationship. Jisc is genuinely there to support us, rather than simply having a commercial interest. They go above and beyond.”

—Jason Quinn

Next steps

Find out more about our cyber security threat monitoring or contact your relationship manager.