Case Study: American University achieves full-network visibility and faster threat response with Vectra AI Inc.'s Cognito NDR

American University jettisons signatures and open-source tools for network detection and response

American University, a private university in Washington, D.C., needed to strengthen cybersecurity across its campus, data center and emerging cloud environments while supporting roughly 60,000 users, 20,000+ devices and 700 servers. The security team sought to replace time‑consuming open‑source monitoring and signature‑based intrusion detection, which created a high operational burden, noisy alerts and limited east‑west visibility.

The university deployed Vectra’s Cognito NDR platform, using AI/ML and virtual sensors on VMware to correlate cloud and on‑prem traffic, consolidate alerts, and automate routine Tier‑1/2 tasks. The change improved visibility across the full attack lifecycle, reduced false positives, shifted about 25% of Tier‑2 work to Tier‑1 analysts, cut response time by ~20%, and delivered greater protection for critical university assets.

American University

Eric Weakland

Director of Information Security