Samoa Information Technology Association (SITA)

The Samoa Information Technology Association (SITA) is the recognized non-profit association in Samoa for the Information & Communications Technology (ICT) profession, attracting a large and active membership from all levels of the ICT industry. 

Henry Mailo is an Exec member at SITA and is a project manager for the e-learning project through his company Urban Tech. Given the non-profit nature of SITA, they rely on stakeholders and donors to be able to provide funding for their projects, including any IT projects.

The challenge

Henry first came across UpGuard during a talk that UpGuard held in Samoa. He also spoke to Unit Trust of Samoa, who shared with Henry that thanks to the UpGuard platform, they were improving their security posture.

In 2020, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) provided funding to SITA to deploy Moodle, an online learning management system (LMS), for schools around Samoa, and Henry was tasked to ensure that Moodle platform is kept safe and secure. 

SITA wanted the security of the LMS platform to the schools to be monitored to ensure that the teachers and students are being kept safe. 

The solution

Henry and his team decided to implement UpGuard across the seven schools where the LMS platform is being used. 

SITA is using UpGuard to:

1. Continuously monitor the school network: UpGuard provides SITA with up-to-date security monitoring for the seven schools they manage for the e-learning project.
2. Identify and close vulnerabilities: With UpGuard, Henry can identify any vulnerabilities on the LMS platform across the school networks, which allows close them promptly and before it causes further issues to the ongoing operations of the schools.   
3. Improving security posture:  Henry said that “UpGuard provides me an overview of the security across all the schools and helps me fix these security issues.” He uses the vulnerabilities scanner feature in the UpGuard platform to help him keep informed on the verified vulnerabilities that his team needs to take action on.