University Executives Seek Expert Advisory Following Multi-Year Legacy SIEM Gap in Student Systems

The Challenge

When the executive leadership of Maple River University commissioned a routine cybersecurity maturity assessment in late 2024, no one expected it to reveal a blind spot stretching nearly half a decade. The university’s legacy Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system, originally implemented in 2016 to monitor activity across student records, financial systems, and research databases, had quietly fallen into partial disrepair after a series of unrelated IT upgrades.

As modernization efforts introduced cloud applications and external integrations with student portals, the SIEM’s data ingestion pipelines were never properly reconfigured. Logs from critical systems, including student financial aid, alumni donations, and the learning management platform, were not being captured. The infrastructure seemed functional, yet alerts and reports represented only a fraction of actual network activity.

By the time internal auditors noticed irregularities in incident reports, the gap had persisted for several years. The registrar’s office had also flagged minor anomalies, such as delayed access updates and inconsistent user authentications. Individually these appeared insignificant; collectively they suggested potential oversight and exposure risk.

The discovery unsettled the university’s governance committee. Senior leaders recognized that the issue was not only technical but strategic. For years, executive reports had relied on incomplete security metrics. Confidence in operational resilience and board-level cybersecurity reporting deteriorated. Faculty representatives questioned whether personal data had been adequately protected, and the provincial privacy commissioner’s office was quietly briefed as a precaution.

In accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), the university initiated an internal review to determine whether unauthorized access had occurred during the affected period. No confirmed breach was identified, but the inability to reconstruct historical security logs created troubling ambiguity. Leadership acknowledged the implications for compliance, reputation, and trust, and sought external executive advisory to realign cybersecurity oversight.

Our Solution

Service: Advisory and Executive Consulting with a focus on Governance, Risk, and Compliance

Executive oversight and risk framing. We established a cyber steering group with a clear RACI across Security, IT, the Registrar, Finance, and Research. We aligned risk appetite and reporting thresholds for student systems and identity platforms.
Forensic logging gap assessment. We mapped all expected log sources, including SIS, LMS, IdP and SSO, finance, advancement CRM, endpoints, network, and cloud. We quantified coverage, retention, and integrity, and assessed reconstruction feasibility using application and cloud-native logs.
Architecture remediation plan. We redesigned ingestion pipelines, enforced clock synchronization, and standardized schemas. We defined minimum viable telemetry by system criticality and introduced control health checks and purple-team signal validation.
Policy and control uplift. We updated logging and monitoring standards, retention schedules, and vendor data-processing addenda. We harmonized requirements under PIPEDA and relevant provincial statutes such as FIPPA and FOIP, and considered CASL and PCI DSS where applicable.
Board reporting refresh. We implemented a concise KPI set, including log coverage, source health, a proxy for mean time to detect, and control exceptions, supported by a quarterly attestation model for control owners.

The Value

Restored visibility. Monitored log coverage increased from an estimated 40 to 50 percent to at least 95 percent of priority systems within one quarter.
Improved detection readiness. Continuous validation reduced false negatives across defined use cases by more than 60 percent.
Regulatory assurance. Documented compliance rationale under PIPEDA and provincial privacy laws supported a defensible audit trail and reduced the likelihood of reportable uncertainty.
Board-grade metrics. Leaders received four executive KPIs and two leading indicators, enabling risk-informed decisions and credible governance reporting.
Operational efficiency. A standardized onboarding checklist cut the time to restore telemetry for new systems to five business days or fewer.

Implementation Roadmap

Phase 0: Stabilize (Weeks 0–2)

Form the cyber steering group and set a limited change freeze on logging configurations that affect student systems.
Confirm legal triage with privacy counsel under PIPEDA and applicable provincial statutes.
Baseline log coverage and retention, and identify must-have sources.
Phase 1: Assess and Reconstruct (Weeks 2–6)

Complete a telemetry inventory spanning SIS, LMS, IdP and SSO, finance, advancement, network, endpoints, and cloud.
Reconstruct history where feasible using application and cloud logs, and document uncertainties and control exceptions.
Map critical detections to required signals and prioritize ingestion fixes.
Phase 2: Remediate Architecture (Weeks 6–10)

Rebuild ingestion pipelines, enforce time synchronization, and enable log integrity controls.
Implement normalization, parsing, and enrichment standards, and deploy source health monitors.
Run purple-team signal checks to validate end-to-end detections.
Phase 3: Govern and Report (Weeks 10–12)

Publish the updated logging and monitoring standard, retention matrices, and vendor clauses, and assign RACI owners.
Launch the executive dashboard with coverage, source health SLA, detection proxy, and control exceptions, plus onboarding SLA and unresolved gaps as leading indicators.
Begin quarterly control attestations and exception management.
Phase 4: Sustain and Improve (Quarterly)

Conduct periodic control testing and alert tuning, and deliver targeted training for system owners.
Review scope changes through the telemetry onboarding checklist.
Report outcomes and residual risks to the board, and recalibrate risk appetite annually.

Info Sheet

Necessary Action Type and Steps to be Taken

1. Establish an executive-led oversight group and declare a limited change freeze on critical logging configurations.
2. Conduct a forensic assessment to map all systems expected to feed the SIEM (student information, LMS, IAM/SSO, finance, advancement).
3. Engage privacy counsel to assess obligations under PIPEDA and applicable provincial privacy legislation.
4. Reconfigure and modernize SIEM ingestion pipelines with centralized normalization and time synchronization.
5. Update policies, data retention schedules, and vendor security clauses.
6. Redesign the board reporting dashboard with explicit metrics and identified control limitations.
7. Implement ongoing validation, testing, and alert tuning to maintain operational readiness.

Industry Sector

Education (Post-Secondary)

Applicable Legislation

PIPEDA, FIPPA/FOIP (as applicable), CASL, PCI DSS, and CCCS ITSG-33 cybersecurity guidance.

Third Parties

Legacy SIEM vendor, MSSP, cloud service providers (LMS, SIS, IdP/SSO), payment processor, alumni CRM provider, privacy counsel, and external forensics advisory firm.

Tags

sector: education | service: advisory | legacy-systems | operational-resilience | board-reporting | PIPEDA | logging-governance