Mobile Security | News

Kentucky District Ramps Up Security, Network Management for iPad Initiative

• By David Nagel
• 07/16/12

Kentucky's Woodford County School District has adopted a new mobile identity and access management system in an effort to support its 1-to-1 iPad initiative.

Woodford County SD began providing iPads to every high school student and faculty member in the district less than a year ago. To date, the district has rolled out about 1,600 iPads, which it's now supporting with the Mobile IAM appliance from Enterasys Networks.

Part of the Enterasys OneFabric Security architecture, Mobile IAM is a BYOD network solution for access, mobile identity management, inventory management, and policy enforcement. It's designed to provide total visibility to the IT staff and offers real-time tracking, unique state change notification, and granular security and access features at the levels of devices, users, and applications. Mobile IAM is an appliance-based solution available either as a physical device or as a virtual appliance.

According to information released today by Enterasys, as part of the program, Woodford County SD lets its students participate in a digital citizenship program called Digital Driver's License, offered by the P20 Innovation Lab at the University of Kentucky. Through the program, students are trained in digital citizenship, and, through Enterasys OneFabric, their "demonstrated level of responsibility" is tied directly to their network access privileges.

"When you spend a million dollars on an initiative of this scale, it just has to work. We needed a wireless network that could track, monitor and compartmentalize each device to provide the necessary accountability from an administrative side, but without sacrificing usability," said James Tuttle, network administrator for Woodford County SD, in a prepared ststement. "The Enterasys OneFabric architecture makes this possible as it verifies proper or improper use of the resources for granting or removing expanded access rights and motivates the students to be good stewards of the technology."

"The speed of the Enterasys network, coupled with the capacity of the wireless access points and the ability to track students, means we're not spending time managing the network, but rather dedicate our time improving classroom instruction," said Greg French, CIO of Woodford County SD. "Enterasys has allowed us to focus on teaching and learning – not the technology– so we can continue our goal of developing our students' 21st century skills."

Woodford County School District serves about 4,000 students in eight schools, including one preschool, four elementary schools, one middle school, one high school, and one alternative education academy.