Case Study: UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) secures millions of university applications and gains real-time security visibility with Splunk Enterprise Security

UCAS Secures Millions of University Applications With Splunk Enterprise Security Analytics

UCAS, the U.K.’s shared admissions service handling nearly three million applications from around 700,000 applicants to 380+ universities and colleges each year, faced a critical security and operational challenge: large, short-term traffic spikes (especially over two weeks in August) and disparate systems that required manual monitoring, making real-time, end-to-end visibility and stakeholder assurance difficult.

UCAS deployed Splunk Cloud with Splunk Enterprise Security and the Splunk App for AWS to centralize analytics, power SOC dashboards, and automate alerts (including daily file-audit notifications). The result was real-time operational and security insights across on‑premises and AWS environments, faster threat detection and response, reduced need for large analyst teams, and more time for strategic planning and proving security posture to stakeholders.

UCAS

Neil Bell

Security Assurance Manager