BeyondTrust > Case Studies > BeyondTrust Protects High School from Dangerous Computing Activities

BeyondTrust Protects High School from Dangerous Computing Activities

Company Size

11-200

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

BeyondTrust’s PowerBroker Endpoint Protection Platform

Tech Stack

Windows Vista SP1
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Flash

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Endpoint Security

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Cybersecurity

Services

Cybersecurity Services

About The Customer

Bishop Verot Catholic High School is a religious institution located in Fort Myers, Florida. The school provides its students with a number of PCs that they can use to complete homework or conduct research. The school has a controlled environment in the library and computer labs, but students' online activities can't be closely supervised due to the limited number of teachers. At the beginning of each year, students have to sign an acceptable use agreement, which states that they'll only use computing resources for school purposes. However, the school faces challenges in enforcing this agreement as students often try to challenge authority and find workarounds to access the internet without restrictions. The school's IT systems are managed by a systems administrator, Jason Castaldo.

The Challenge

Bishop Verot Catholic High School in Fort Myers, Florida provides students with a number of PCs that they can use to complete home work or conduct research. The trouble is that even in the controlled environments of the library and computer labs, students’ online activities can’t be that closely supervised. There aren’t an unlimited number of teachers to watch over their shoulders, after all. At the beginning of each year, students have to sign an acceptable use agreement, which says that they’ll only use computing resources for school purposes. But teens will be teens, and they’ll do their best to challenge authority. Antivirus and Web filtering software give the school some protection and control, but students are savvy and would prefer to have unfettered access to the Internet. “After we installed Web filtering, students began using proxies,” said Jason Castaldo, Bishop Verot’s systems administrator. “ We needed more sophisticated security just to keep up with their workarounds.” Bishop Verot also had to protect the network from malware. No matter how much security training you offer, every IT person knows that end users are still the weakest link in the security chain.

The Solution

When Bishop Verot’s antivirus subscription expired, the school started to study the security market. Bishop Verot had been using Panda Security’s AdminSecure. The school was pleased with the product’s performance but sought more protection at a similar price point. “We wanted additional features that would protect our network in the event that malware made it past our initial lines of defense,” Castaldo said. With traditional antivirus software, there’s always the threat of zero-day attacks. Traditional antivirus programs rely on signatures, so if you don’t have the signature you’re at risk. Research labs can take weeks or even months to develop signatures for new threats. “We wanted security that didn’t need to know what exactly the threat was in order to provide protection,” he said. Bishop Verot considered products from Computer Associates and eTrust. Both offered more functionality – but at a much higher price. Finally, the school looked at BeyondTrust. BeyondTrust’s PowerBroker Endpoint Protection Platform (PB EPP) offers an array of security features at a much lower cost than competing security products. PB EPP protects clients by identifying behaviors, not signatures. Offering integrated multi-layered endpoint protection, PB EPP is a single, lightweight client that replaces multiple security agents, protecting against known exploits, zero day attacks, and all other attack vectors.

Operational Impact