IT Governance and Security Strategy

With around 28,000 students, over 400 professors, and more than 5,500 employees, Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU) is the second largest university in the state of Hessen. University operations heavily and increasingly depend on the quality of its information technology (IT) services since efficient research, teaching, and administration depend on functional, legally compliant, and secure IT. Digital transformation activities will therefore be of great importance when developing all dimensions of the university's performance in the future. Providing high-performance IT services and infrastructure is particularly relevant here. In addition to the direct demands on the university's computer center (HRZ) as a core service facility, this also increases the importance of sustainable and up-to-date IT governance, which will enable JLU to specifically target the diverse challenges posed by growing digital pervasiveness into everyday university life.

While fulfilling these tasks, JLU must also ensure that all information and data entrusted to it can be handled with confidence and processed correctly. IT security is therefore an integral, overarching component of the infrastructural and methodological nature and development of digital transformation in research, teaching, and administration.

For these reasons, JLU began a comprehensive process to continuously develop its IT strategy. The university subjected its HRZ to a multi-stage review process. Subsidized via the program Strengthening the Strategic Capability of Hessian Universities, JLU collaborated with external consultants KPMG AG (IT governance) and xiv-consult GmbH (IT security) to evaluate its status quo and develop a sustainable IT governance and security strategy with explicit recommendations for action based on these results. Implementing this strategy is specifically intended to impact all internal processes and will affect all university departments from its computer center operations, to its administration, faculties, and centers.

Strategy Document (German only)