Case Study: The University of Western Australia achieves modern, secure digital experiences with Cloudflare

Cloudflare enables the University of Western Australia to deliver modern, secure digital experiences

The University of Western Australia (UWA), a top‑ranked public university founded in 1911 with two campuses, 22 schools and more than 75 research centres, faced an urgent need to replace outdated infrastructure and balance open global collaboration with strong cybersecurity. With roughly 1,200 legacy systems (many unmanaged), complex DNS records and a shift to remote delivery during COVID‑19, UWA needed modern performance and security tools to protect externally facing services and meet compliance for research partnerships.

By expanding its use of Cloudflare, UWA consolidated over 18,000 DNS records, decommissioned on‑prem DNS, and moved 130+ affiliate web properties behind Cloudflare DNS; Cloudflare WAF implemented an IP allowlist to sharply reduce the attack surface and, when integrated with Splunk, gave the university proactive visibility into threats. The project also simplified SSL certificate management, improved Wi‑Fi and governance, ensured business continuity during attacks, and positioned UWA for further network security improvements.

The University of Western Australia

Peter Seddon

Assistant Director - Strategy, Architecture, Portfolio and Business Intelligence