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Ensured digital safeguarding for 25,000 students, improved agility, and delivered faster security reporting
The Bedford College Group is the largest education provider in the South East Midlands. But its 25,000+ students were poorly served by a complex, outdated network security platform, which struggled to detect sophisticated threats, demanded significant intervention, and lacked the performance to enable them to learn from any location. By contrast, a modern, trusted Palo Alto Networks network security platform now digitally safeguards students in real time without restricting their freedom to learn. The Group’s security team is more agile too – complex network security problems are now resolved in minutes rather than weeks, and reporting time has been cut from hours to minutes.
In brief
Industry
Higher Education
Country
UK
Challenges
The Group needed to protect a vast array of new digital education devices against the spiralling volume of cyberattacks and ransomwareattacks on the education sector. They also needed to gain the government-backed Cyber Essentials certification.
Solution
Palo Alto Networks® Network Security platform:
- ML-Powered Next-Generation Firewalls
- Cloud-Delivered Security Services including
- Threat Prevention
- Advanced URL Filtering
- Advanced Wildfire®
Results
- Digital safeguarding allows students to browse securely in line with education guidelines without restricting learning
- Just minutes to create security reports that previously, with limited security resources, took hours
- Same-day approval of application control requests, which had previously taken weeks
CHALLENGE
Defend applications, networks, and 25,000 students in a multicampus environment
The Group needed to protect a vast array of new digital education devices – headsets, whiteboards, and more – against the spiralling volume of cyberattacks and ransomware attacks on the education sector. They also needed to gain the government-backed Cyber Essentials certification.
- Existing network security tool provided no live traffic monitoring or alerting, and minimal reporting.
- Uncontrolled growth in unsecured digital curriculum technology.
- Students and staff needed secure, high-performance remote access.
- Pressure to maximise security and reduce complexity with a limited budget and small team.
SOLUTION
Secure education and a great digital-learning experience
Following a Palo Alto Networks Security Lifecycle Review (SLR) Cyberthreat Assessment – which provided granular visibility into risky applications and threats bypassing existing cybersecurity controls – the Group standardised on ML-Powered Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) across two campuses. The ML-Powered NGFWs included the natively integrated Cloud-Delivered Security Services (CDSS) which offered consistent protection throughout their environment, backed by Unit 42 threat research to increase protection against threats revealed by the SLR Cyberthreat Assessment.
The intelligent network security platform provides unprecedented granular control and visibility into all College traffic, ensuring complete control over student and staff access. Automation and the unified security view also make it easier for the lean team to proactively protect against emerging threats – and frees up their time to concentrate on more strategic tasks.
The College is now implementing Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect for its staff, replacing a legacy Ivanti VPN. This will allow staff to work securely from anywhere and also reduce the attack surface without impacting performance or the user experience. Mike Foster – Helpdesk and Technical Specialist – and his team at The Bedford College Group also anticipate a dramatic increase in productivity via remote working. The simplicity of the solution is also expected to reduce the volume of support calls.
