Case Study: Colorado State University strengthens cybersecurity and vendor risk management with UpGuard

UpGuard helps Colorado State University identify vulnerabilities and threats across its attack surface

Colorado State University, a public research university in Fort Collins, faced the challenge of managing a large, decentralized attack surface across hundreds to thousands of domains, IPs, and applications while also protecting student data from vendor-related risks. The university needed a more automated way to identify vulnerabilities, prioritize threats, and manage third-party risk across its complex higher education environment. UpGuard provided the visibility and automation needed to help CSU focus limited security resources on the most important risks.

Using UpGuard’s platform for attack surface monitoring and third-party risk management, Colorado State University gained continuous oversight of more than 19,000 digital assets, 65+ vendors, and 70+ risk vectors. UpGuard helped the university identify unmaintained pages, end-of-life applications, and high-risk assets tied to known exploitable vulnerabilities, while also streamlining vendor security questionnaires, including HECVAT. The result was faster remediation, more efficient vulnerability triage, and scalable vendor risk management that could expand assessment capacity by up to 10x.

Colorado State University

Steve Lovaas

Chief Information Security Officer