Case study: Kingsford Community School

Kingsford Community School needed to complete its programme of network improvements with better email gateway security. The school decided to replace its existing software solution, which had limited blocking capability, to increase the spam catch rate and reduce false positives. A Sophos Email Appliances now provides complete malware protection at the gateway and stops five times as much spam, with minimal administrative support.

"The Sophos Email Appliance was all I would expect from the company - it was easy to set up, and integrated into our network exactly as promised."
Steve Blois, IT Manager

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Fact file

Business challenge

• The main potential source of infection and irritation was email and spam sent to school staff, who had lost confidence in the network following a serious virus infection.
• An unsophisticated email gateway filter allowed too much spam through to mailboxes but blocked some legitimate mail.
• The administrative time involved in releasing legitimate messages that had been blocked was unacceptable.

Technology solution

• Sophos Anti-Virus was installed on the school's Windows 2003 server and XP clients.
• The IT manager hadn't considered a gateway appliance, but knew that a Sophos solution would be easy to set up and work as claimed.
• The Sophos ES4000 Email Appliance was evaluated during the summer holiday, and went live in the autumn term.

Business results

• Sophos Anti-Virus safeguarded the network from the rising tide of malware.
• The level of spam detection increased five-fold to 50 junk emails a week, and staff were much more confident in the email system.
• The need for regular administration virtually disappeared, and it was easy to track messages and release them from the onboard quarantine.