Case Studies

Integra secures Diglossia’s EdTech platform with Unified Threat Management and Compliance-Driven Cloud Architecture across the Middle East.

Diglossia is a UAE-based EdTech company founded in 2014, focused on revolutionizing Arabic literacy through modern, standards-aligned, data-driven language assessments. Their flagship offerings include:

TALA (Test of Arabic Language Arts): The first comprehensive online assessment for Arabic reading, writing, and vocabulary. It’s standards-based—aligned with guidelines by Dr. Hanada Taha of Zayed University—and is used biannually in schools across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the MENA region. The latest version, TALA 2, introduced in 2021, features enhanced frameworks, item types, and reports to provide richer insights

Diagnostic and Adaptive Testing: The platform delivers diagnostic insights, enabling educators to pinpoint individual skill gaps, offer evidence-based interventions, and track student progress over time.

End-to-End Educational Analytics: Covering grades KG2 through 11, Diglossia offers a full suite that includes assessment, training programs, strategic analytics, and reporting—supporting curriculum alignment and professional development.

By leveraging online, adaptive testing and robust analytics, Diglossia empowers teachers, education boards, and regulators with actionable data—improving student outcomes, curriculum effectiveness, and Arabic literacy across the Middle East.

Diglossia GenAI Dubai Case Study

The Challenge

Diglossia faced several critical security challenges as it expanded its EdTech platform across the Middle East, especially with increased adoption by public-sector education boards and regulators:

Rising Data Protection and Compliance Demands

With government clients introducing stricter data sovereignty, retention, and privacy regulations (e.g., UAE’s NDMO policies or Saudi PDPL), Diglossia needed to ensure its systems complied with regional standards—especially for storing and processing sensitive student performance data.

Risk of Data Leakage and Privacy Breach

As an assessment platform handling thousands of student records, Diglossia had to guard against potential breaches from insider threats, insecure APIs, and weak access controls that could lead to unauthorized data exposure.

Evolving Threat Landscape

With rising cyber threats such as credential stuffing, DDoS attacks, and phishing campaigns targeting education platforms, Diglossia needed active, real-time defenses to maintain availability and trust during peak testing seasons.

Lack of Unified Threat Visibility

Operating in a hybrid cloud environment, Diglossia lacked centralized visibility across its endpoints, cloud infrastructure, and application layers—leading to fragmented incident response and difficulty correlating security signals.

Performance and Availability Risks

Security misconfigurations or resource exhaustion attacks could degrade platform performance—directly impacting testing sessions, SLAs, and institutional credibility.

The Solution

Integra implemented a comprehensive, education-sector–focused cloud security framework to help Diglossia overcome its growing challenges around compliance, data protection, threat management, and platform resilience. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how Integra addressed each issue:
 
Compliance with Regional Data Protection Standards

Integra began by assessing Diglossia’s AWS environment for alignment with regional compliance mandates such as the UAE’s National Data Management Office (NDMO) regulations and Saudi Arabia’s Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL).

    • Implemented AWS Organizations and Service Control Policies (SCPs) to enforce secure configurations across accounts.

    • Enabled AWS Config and Audit Manager to ensure real-time compliance tracking and reporting.

    • Enforced data residency and retention policies using Amazon S3 with cross-region replication controls and encryption.

Securing Sensitive Student Data and Preventing Data Leakage

With Diglossia handling large volumes of student assessment data, Integra prioritized identity and data protection.

    • Deployed AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) with least-privilege principles and role-based access.

    • Used AWS Macie to automatically discover, classify, and protect personally identifiable information (PII) in S3 buckets.

    • Enabled Amazon GuardDuty to monitor for anomalous activity such as data exfiltration or privilege escalation.

Protecting Against Evolving Cyber Threats

To defend against external attacks during peak testing periods, Integra implemented a layered perimeter defense strategy.

    • Configured AWS WAF and Shield Advanced on CloudFront and API Gateway to block SQL injection, XSS, and DDoS attempts.

    • Integrated Trend Micro Vision One for extended detection and response (XDR) across endpoints and workloads.

    • Created automated remediation playbooks using AWS Lambda and Security Hub integrations to respond to threats in real-time.

Establishing Unified Threat Visibility and Response

Before Integra’s engagement, Diglossia had fragmented logs and no centralized view of security events.

    • Centralized log aggregation using Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, and Trend Micro Vision One’s unified dashboard.

    • Established a Security Operations Center (SOC) runbook, with alert correlation, threat prioritization, and escalation paths.

    • Implemented Amazon Detective for deep investigation and visualization of suspicious activity.

Ensuring Application Performance and Resilience

Security measures were integrated without compromising system performance.

    • Used Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, and AWS Global Accelerator to ensure high availability under load.

    • Monitored app performance with Amazon CloudWatch Alarms and XDR metrics to detect any impact from potential attacks.

    • Applied infrastructure-as-code (IaC) with AWS CloudFormation to ensure consistent, rapid, and secure deployments.

The Result

Diglossia now operates a secure, compliant, and highly available platform trusted by education boards and regulators. The integration of AWS-native and third-party tools into a unified security fabric has not only reduced risks but also enhanced trust and ensured uninterrupted learning and assessment experiences across the region.