Alabama School District Graduates to Application Whitelisting

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 09/09/08

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Trussville City School District in Alabama has selected Bit9 Parity to secure its computers, replacing application control technology from Lumension Security. The new school district, with five schools and 4,150 students, created a state-of-the art, technology-focused curriculum that uses blogs, podcasts, and other Web 2.0 approaches as part of the learning process. A majority of teachers and students in the sixth grade have been issued laptop computers, which introduced security challenges.

In order to have an acceptable policy in place to block or filter access to offensive material and to monitor online activities of students, Trussville chose Bit9 Parity to implement adaptive application lockdown. The district has identified the approved, authorized applications that are allowed to run on the school's computers, and Bit9 Parity prevents any unauthorized or malicious software from running. This customized lockdown mode provides appropriate Web access to administrators, students, and teachers.

"We sought a reliable, simple-to-administer security solution for our school district," said Shawn Nutting, director of technology. "Bit9 Parity has allowed us to reap the benefits of our investment in new learning technologies while preventing any viruses or unauthorized software from compromising the well-being of our students."

Trussville decided to implement Bit9 Parity after facing challenges with its previous security solution, which included administrative complexity, crashing systems, and blocking of routine software updates.

The Bit9 Parity whitelisting approach taps into a global software registry to identity and classify all software running on a given computer. It blocks malicious and unauthorized software and allows for centralized management of security policy enforcement.

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About the author: Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business for a number of publications. Contact her at [email protected].

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