A spate of cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities gave the University of Salford CIO Mark Wantling some sleepless nights. His homework? Protect the network, pivot to home learning, accelerate digital transformation and ask the CEO for budget flexibility. But a brutal penetration test that successfully poked holes throughout his network in a matter of hours was what lit the touchpaper. It was this exercise which proved the catalyst for identifying and remediating zero-day vulnerabilities linked to the WannaCry and SolarWinds incidents, for issuing of 38,000 critical security patches and for bringing his IT operations and infosec teams together in process and tooling.
