When the University of Notre Dame commissioned a penetration test of their Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment in the summer of 2024, they expected strong results. As a leader in higher education cloud adoption, the university was already ahead of many institutions, with almost 90% of their central IT infrastructure running on AWS.
The test confirmed that Notre Dame’s security was above average compared to their peers but also identified an opportunity to strengthen their web application defenses even further. Following the penetration-testing firm’s recommendation to implement web application firewalls, Notre Dame embarked on a journey to become the first US higher education institution to take a comprehensive, enterprise-wide approach to deploying AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF), AWS Shield Advanced, and AWS Firewall Manager across the entirety of their AWS infrastructure. This meticulous implementation also established a blueprint for other…
