Umm Al-Qura University replaced perimeter security with campus-wide Zero Trust.

The challenge

Umm Al-Qura University is a leading higher education institution in Saudi Arabia with a rapidly expanding student population and diverse academic offerings. The university's legacy perimeter-based security systems were no longer adequate for a large, decentralised environment where students, faculty, and researchers access resources from campus, home, and around the world.

Several gaps had to be closed:

• Legacy infrastructure. Outdated perimeter-based security tools could not protect a decentralised campus environment with thousands of users on multiple networks.
• Remote access at scale. Students, faculty, and researchers needed secure access to applications from campus, home, and international locations.
• Sensitive data protection. Student records, financial information, and research data required protection against breaches and data loss.
• Complex user management. Managing access across multiple systems, faculties, and user types created administrative burden and inconsistent security.

What Brixio deployed

Cloudflare Access (ZTNA)

• Identity-based access to on-premises and cloud applications.
• Policies based on identity, device posture, and location.
• Secure access for students, faculty, researchers, and administrative staff.

Cloudflare Gateway (SWG)

• Internet threat protection and content filtering.
• University-specific outbound traffic policies.
• DNS-level security across campus networks.

Cloudflare WARP

• Client-side VPN replacement encrypting remote traffic.
• Optimised performance for users accessing university resources from any location.

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)

• Monitoring of cloud applications (Office 365, GitHub, and others).
• Shadow IT detection and security policy enforcement.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

• Monitoring of network traffic and SaaS applications.
• Detection and protection of sensitive student, financial, and research data.

Results

After rollout, the university operates with identity-aware controls across every user population, with cloud-application visibility and DLP coverage on sensitive academic and research data.