Indiana District Secures E-Mail and Web with Appliances

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 03/24/09
##AUTHORSPLIT##<--->

The School City of Hammond in Indiana has deployed McAfee's network security solutions to secure the district's schools from cyber crime. The district deployed E-Mail Gateway and Web Gateway appliances throughout the school system.

The e-mail hardware prevents spam, viruses, and phishing attacks from clogging the school's e-mail system, which serves 2,500 employees in 21 schools. Since the deployment, School City has seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of spam and virus-laden e-mails that enter the network.

"McAfee Email Gateway blocks more than 99 percent of spam and viruses," said Curtis Jackson, network administrator. "It also cuts down on bandwidth used by the email system, since McAfee Email Gateway blocks the bad emails before they even get to the network."

The company's anti-spam approach uses TrustedSource, a reputation-based technology that assigns scores to Internet hosts and devices, domains, URLs, and messages based on their past behavior.

"TrustedSource is able to attack spam and other unwanted traffic at the outer edge of the network," said Jackson. "In combination with McAfee's other ... technologies, School City educators no longer have to worry about the spam problem, giving them more valuable time to spend on their educational mission."

The gateway appliance helps the school meet federal Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requirements by ensuring that inappropriate Web content can't be viewed by the district's 14,000 students. Some of those users would try to get around previous kinds of filtering software using anonymizers, proxies, and encrypted connections to access Web sites that were off limits.

"One of the main reasons we went with McAfee Web Gateway was because of the ability to scan [secure socket layer]-encrypted content," added Jackson. "Students had been able to get around the filtering via SSL. After deployment, McAfee Web Gateway closed that loophole for good."

The installation has also reduced administration, said Jackson. "With McAfee's appliance-based solution, you just plug it in, set it up and let it go. It's an easy box to deal with and we don't have to worry about updates. And of course, it's not hackable."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • The First Steps of Establishing Your Cloud Security Strategy

    In this guide, we'll identify some first steps you can take to establish your cloud security strategy. We'll do so by discussing the cloud security impact of individual, concrete actions featured within the CIS Critical Security Controls® (CIS Controls®) and the CIS Benchmarks™.

  • Human Error Remains the Leading Cause of Cloud Data Breaches

    Human error is still one of the biggest threats to cloud security, despite all the technology bells and whistles and alerts and services out there, from multi-factor authentication, to social engineering training, to enterprise-wide integrated cybersecurity platforms, and more.

  • Abstract illustration of a human news reporter interviewing an AI with a microphone

    AI on AI in Education: A Dialogue

    Scholars are doing lots of asking and predicting about the risks and rewards of generative artificial intelligence in school, but has anyone asked the all-knowing chatbots?

  • Pattern of desks with interconnected circles, triangles, and lines

    Classroom Furniture Giveaway Seeks Dream Learning Space Design

    Educators have a chance to design their ideal K-12 learning space in a contest recently announced by classroom furniture manufacturer KI.