Sector: Education
Founded by Henry VIII in 1546, Trinity College is one of 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge and counts 34 Nobel Laureates amongst its members. Today Trinity is a thriving international community of 750 undergraduates and 357 postgraduates, 190 fellows and 350 staff, renowned for its excellent teaching and research.
The Challenge
Comprehensive identity security for all Active Directory users
- Enforce MFA on privileged accounts in on-prem infrastructure
- Gain visibility and control over service account behaviours
- Implement security measures without disrupting existing IT operations
The Solution
Enhanced protection for privileged and service accounts
- MFA enforcement extended to on-prem privileged accounts
- Improved visibility into service account activities and risks
- Seamless integration with existing Microsoft environment
The Challenge: Strengthening on-prem infrastructure and service account management
Trinity College’s IT and security team recognised several security challenges in their identity security strategy. While cloud-based applications were well-protected, their on-prem infrastructure lacked MFA enforcement, leaving privileged accounts vulnerable. Service accounts, a critical part of their IT operations, also had limited oversight, increasing the risk of misuse or compromise.
The IT and security team sought a solution that would enforce MFA on all privileged users, provide visibility into service accounts, and integrate smoothly with their existing Microsoft environment without causing disruptions.
“Our privileged accounts and service accounts were a primary area of concern. We lacked visibility into service account behaviours, and our on-prem applications had no MFA support, leaving potential security gaps”
Duncan Malthouse-Hobbs
Head of IT
Trinity College
University of Cambridge
Finding the right identity security partner
C-STEM, a long-standing supplier to the Oxford and Cambridge University Colleges, conducted a thorough review of Identity & Access Management (IAM) solutions to address their specific challenges. As part of this due diligence, C-STEM gathered valuable feedback from a Cambridge College, confirming Silverfort was the right solution to provide on-prem multi-factor authentication (MFA) and service account discovery.
The opportunity to work with Trinity College—an early adopter of Silverfort—marked C-STEM’s first collaboration with their IT and security team. This engagement allowed C-STEM to demonstrate its value as a partner, build confidence in the team’s ability to successfully deliver security projects, and lay the foundation for a long-term, trusted partnership.
Trinity College selected Silverfort as its identity security vendor, drawn to its proven success in seamless MFA enforcement, real-time authentication insights, and integration with Active Directory. The IT and security teams began deployment with a proof-of-concept (POC) on a single domain controller, ensuring a smooth transition before expanding Silverfort campus-wide. Its ability to analyse authentication requests in real time and enforce security policies made the implementation efficient and non-disruptive.
The Solution: Implementing MFA and service account protection with Silverfort
MFA protection and adaptive identity protection policies
As Head of IT Duncan Malthouse-Hobbs noted: “Silverfort has provided us with a strong solution that was easy to deploy and delivered immediate identity security benefits. Its ability to protect legacy applications with MFA has made it an invaluable tool in our cybersecurity strategy.”
The implementation delivered key security capabilities:
Advanced risk-based authentication:
- MFA enforcement for access to sensitive resources from unfamiliar locations
- Detection and securing legacy authentication protocols to prevent unauthorised access
Command-line and RDP security enhancement:
- MFA verification for PsExec executions across network segments
- Enhanced authentication for PowerShell remote sessions, script execution and RDP connections
- Granular control over WMI command usage for system administration
IT Infrastructure Engineer Bryan Carpenter also validated the seamless deployment: “Rolling out Silverfort was incredibly straightforward. We quickly saw value in its ability to enforce MFA on legacy systems without requiring additional software.”
Service account protection and lateral movement prevention
The implementation transformed Trinity College’s service account management through:
Advanced risk-based authentication:
- Intelligent mapping of service account usage across multiple domains
- Continuous real-time monitoring of service account behaviour patterns
- Identification and remediation of dormant admin accounts
- Real-time detection and prevention of suspicious lateral movement attempts
The impact surpassed expectations, as Carpenter shared: “One of our team members was initially sceptical about Silverfort, but after seeing its impact, he became a strong advocate. It has not only helped secure our accounts but also revealed security gaps we didn’t even know existed”.
Through this implementation, Trinity College established effective identity security that balances protection with operational efficiency. Their partnership with C-STEM and Silverfort has been instrumental in achieving these outcomes.
Systems + Techniques = Effective Management
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