Florida State University (FSU) is one of the nation’s leading academic institutions, serving more than 45,000 students across 17 colleges. With a sprawling campus in Tallahassee and a global footprint through research initiatives and partnerships, FSU’s operations span academics, research, healthcare and athletics. This vast scope, combined with a high volume of sensitive data, makes FSU an attractive target for cybercriminals. 

“Higher education is a huge target,” explained Bill Hunkapiller, Chief Information Security Officer of FSU. “Threat actors target environments like ours to steal sensitive data, encrypt systems and even launch triple-extortion attacks.”

When Hunkapiller joined FSU, he identified gaps in the university’s defenses. One obvious gap was 24/7 threat monitoring. 

“If something happened over the weekend, we likely wouldn’t know about it until Monday morning. It left us vulnerable, especially since attackers often strike on weekends or holidays when they assume staff aren’t watching,” said Hunkapiller.

Adding to the challenge, FSU’s current systems generated excessive noise — alerts that turned out to be false positives “an unacceptable amount of time,” per Hunkapiller. The security team found themselves drowning in notifications, struggling to distinguish actionable threats from irrelevant data. For a sprawling organization, this inefficiency compounded the risk of attack.

In 2023, FSU became a CrowdStrike customer and deployed a suite of protections across tens of thousands of endpoints. The university licensed CrowdStrike Falcon® Complete Next-Gen MDR for EDR and identity protection, creating a unified defense with the AI-native CrowdStrike Falcon® cybersecurity platform. 

For Hunkapiller, Falcon Complete Next-Gen MDR was a game changer. “We now have 24/7 managed detection and response,” he said. “The Falcon Complete team isolates compromised devices in real time, without waiting for us to intervene. That level of responsiveness is something we didn’t have before, and it’s made a huge difference.”

The benefits were evident during a recent incident. “It was a minor issue, but it happened over the weekend,” Hunkapiller recalled. “The Falcon Complete team isolated the device and removed it from the network without our intervention. Without Falcon Complete, we wouldn’t have even known about the incident until it had potentially spread further.”

CrowdStrike Falcon® Identity Protection has also played a crucial role in strengthening FSU’s security posture. By monitoring identities and detecting risks like compromised passwords or clear-text credentials, the Falcon platform module has helped prevent privilege escalation attacks and lateral movement within the network.

“When we deployed Falcon Identity Protection, it uncovered risks we didn’t know we had,” Hunkapiller said. “For example, it identified accounts with compromised passwords … a common vulnerability we were able to address immediately.”

Consolidation and centralization have been common themes across FSU’s cybersecurity transformation. “What sets CrowdStrike apart is its ability to consolidate capabilities into a single platform,” said Hunkapiller. “The integration of endpoint and identity security streamlines everything and helps us focus on real threats. It’s made us much more efficient.”

The same can be said for CrowdStrike’s role in helping FSU centralize its IT and security operations across its global footprint. 

“Cybersecurity has been a driving force behind centralization,” Hunkapiller said. “With 308 IT units consolidated into 50, we’re standardizing policies and technologies to eliminate unnecessary risks. CrowdStrike is a big part of that vision because it provides the centralized, scalable platform we need.”

For Hunkapiller, the value of CrowdStrike lies in trust and results. “When you look at what it provides, it’s paid for itself many times over. It’s not just about protecting the university; it’s about enabling us to focus on what really matters: research, academics and innovation.”

Whether it’s protecting endpoints, securing identities or enabling real-time response, CrowdStrike is helping FSU safeguard its mission while setting a new standard for cybersecurity excellence in higher education.