Students at Marlborough Boys' College in New Zealand are protected
by Sophos solutions.
Safeguarding students and staff from computer threats and
unsuitable internet content is a major priority for Marlborough
Boys' College, one of New Zealand's largest secondary schools.
Founded in 1900, Marlborough Boys' College, in the South Island
of New Zealand, is considered to be one of the nation's leading
secondary schools. The College is located in Blenheim which is the
principal town of the Marlborough province. The province is export
focused and has a strong emphasis on quality service and
production. Its main products are wine, forestry, wool, seafood and
frozen food.
Marlborough Boys' College takes pride in its reputation for
academic, sporting and cultural excellence, and supports students
with a wide range of resources for their learning and personal
development.
The College's investment in technology is a key contributor to
student, teaching and administrative success, and supporting this
investment is a commitment to providing a safe and secure online
environment for all computer users.
Realising that the potential repercussions of a virus or spyware
outbreak, or offensive content, reaching students and staff could
spread far beyond its gates, the College selected Sophos as its IT
security partner in late-2005. Sophos is a world leader in IT
security for the K-12 education sector and currently protects more
than six million teachers, students and administrators around the
world.
Sophos now fully protects more than 1,000 students currently
attending classes at Marlborough Boys' College, as well as over 100
teaching and administrative staff.
According to Peter Olliver, Marlborough Boys' College
Information Manager, "Schools are unique organisations in that the
systems are often targeted by hackers, spammers and virus writers
thinking that our defences are weak. The paradox, of course, is
that we have a significant duty of care to our staff and especially
our students, and therefore must have quite strong defences in
place."
"What makes boys' schools even more unique, perhaps, is the
inquisitive nature of the students who seek to push the boundaries
of the computer network," Olliver says. "With Sophos in the
background, we can allow students to have some flexibility while
ensuring they and the network remain protected at all times."
Technology Solution
Desktops, servers and gateways are protected against malware and
spam threats.
The College has deployed Sophos's integrated anti-virus,
anti-spam, anti-spyware and email policy solutions across every
server, desktop and email gateway at the College. Importantly,
every computer is automatically updated and centrally managed using
Sophos's Central Management Console.
The network features five IBM Blade servers and a Windows 2003
Exchange Server. The College also provides more than 300 desktop
computers for student use - a mix of fat-and thin-client Windows
computers - as well as computers for each of the teaching and
administrative staff.
"Sophos is a great solution for the College because we have been
able to effectively 'set and forget' the system," Olliver says.
"Sophos updates automatically in the background, without requiring
any administration, and if we do have to make any changes, it is
easily done through Sophos's Central Management Console. What that
means for the school is that our IT staff can focus their attention
on developing and supporting quality teaching programs."
The College also permits every student and staff member to
remotely access its network and applications via their laptops and
home PCs through a Citrix Access Gateway.
Sophos Anti-Virus
perfectly complements the Citrix environment by avoiding
unnecessary repeat scanning of files that have already been
confirmed to be free from infection, thereby reducing system
overheads and offering improved performance.
According to Olliver, "Sophos constantly protects our students
and staff from viruses and spyware when they connect to the school
network through Citrix. At any point in time we can have hundreds
of people logging on and off our network remotely, so it is vital
that we can support their needs with high speed access. The use of
Sophos does not impact on our network performance."
Sophos's PureMessage email
solution uniquely integrates anti-virus, anti-spam and policy
enforcement to help the College protect students from exposure to
offensive content without restricting freedom of communication.
Sophos also provides the College with 24/7 live customer support
as well as access to its network of SophosLabs™ threat analysis
centers.
The system was installed by AISCORP which designs, builds and
installs scalable ICT infrastructures for schools throughout New
Zealand.
Business Results
According to Olliver, "Sophos provides the College with a
solution that exceeds the standards set out by the New Zealand
Ministry of Education, and since taking on Sophos we have never had
a major computer virus outbreak across our network."
"Furthermore, with Sophos we feel our network is future-proofed
against new threats that may arise as we ramp up our internet
infrastructure through participation in the Marlborough region's
'Loop Project' which will provide us with very high speed internet
access, in excess of 200mb/s."
The College's overall IT infrastructure has also responded
positively to Sophos's security software.
"The Sophos software was a very welcomedchange from our previous
anti-virus solution which required our IT administration staff to
be very hands-on with its day-to-day management, and it had a
degrading impact on our network performance," Olliver says.
Sophos's regular updates are small in size, automatic, and
quick, minimising the impact on the College's network performance
so its students and staff can work uninterrupted while always
protected against new threats.
"We are committed to providing educational programs and an
environment which meets the needs of our students. With Sophos, we
know that from a security standpoint we have the highest levels of
protection in place which helps us to maintain an effective
learning community," Olliver concludes.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.