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Case Study: Public School District
The large public school system is located in a large metropolitan suburb. The district had 9,000 students spread across 13 campuses with more than 4,000 Windows and Macintosh computers.
The Manager of Technical Services for the school district was not happy with the patchwork approach to network security that was in place. The system had a number of problems and many subscriptions were coming due for the multiple products. Network connections were lost whenever the network crashed. The existing spam filter was effective, but the service provided by the manufacturer was not sufficient to meet the needs of the district. Additionally, the district had installed IP video security systems to monitor and protect the students, but that system was unsecured. The security model in place also included an aging firewall by a leading manufacturer, content filtering by another, antispam by yet another. The district was even using two proxy servers.
After meeting with The Barrier Group sales team, the IT staff decided to install Barrier1 for a 60-day free trial. One IT professional remarked, “Nothing else I looked at came close to the flexibility and the price, so the decision to purchase Barrier1 was a logical one.”
The district decided upon a configuration that included content filtering, intrusion protection and antispam.
The Barrier1 appliance has been installed at the district for over a year. “We installed Barrier1 over a winter break and haven’t had any problems with it,” states the manager. In fact, he was so pleased with the Barrier1 appliance, he discontinued his previous antivirus product and had The Barrier Group engage the antivirus technology. Additionally, Barrier1 is protecting the district for instant messaging, P2P and IP video for multiple locations in their multiple buildings. The customer is even using Barrier1 for monitoring network routers and switches.
After a Six Month Monitoring Period:
| Number of Viruses Stopped | 21,977 |
|---|---|
| Blocked Attacks | 384,169 |
| E-mail Identified As Spam | 252,181 |
| E-mail Effectiveness | 99.96% |
While in operation at the district, Barrier1 noted an attack by an unseen variant from a compromised server at a major national university. Barrier1 blocked the attack, and within microseconds automatically alerted the administrator and The Barrier Group. The Barrier Group wrote a definition in 90 minutes while the remainder of the IT security community didn’t have a signature for almost 20 hours.
The Challenges
The school district was running a patchwork security network driven by a disparate collection of vendors. With IP video and other security concerns, the district needed a new solution to handle their large amount of computers and systems.
The Solution
The district decided upon a configuration that included content filtering, intrusion protection, antispam and antivirus.
The Results
The school district installed Barrier1 over a winter break, and it immediately became a key fixture in their network security protecting e-mail, instant messaging, IP video and more.