Customer Success Story

Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) Gains Control, High Visibility and Security with Lumension® Patch and Remediation

Innovative use of Lumension technology promotes energy conservation at top Singapore School

Overview

Living up to its motto, "The Best Is Yet To Be", the school provides top quality education to almost 3,000 pupils. The school offers many different educational tracks to cater for the various talents of students that have enrolled in the school. The school has traditionally been preparing students for the Singapore-Cambridge GCE ‘O' Level Examination. In the recent four years, the school has offered high ability students the Integrated Programme; a comprehensive four-year or six-year through train programme that leads to the International Baccalaureate Diploma Examinations.

The Challenge

ACS (Independent) has a team of 10 dedicated IT staff who are responsible for ensuring the security and smooth running of the school's IT network, which comprises tablet PCs, desktops and notebooks. Security of the school's network is monitored and maintained via a central console, managed by IT Manager, Robert Ong and his team. In total, the IT team look after 700 nodes within the ACS (Independent) campus and the ACS (Independent) Boarding School.

As a leading school, ACS (Independent) pupils are encouraged to embrace technology as a tool to enhance their studies. However, the proliferation of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter created a need for regular patching of individual computers and laptops, to protect against new virus infections that could be inadvertently picked up through Web 2.0 sites. According to IT industry research firm, Gartner Research, more than 90 per cent of all cyber attacks use known vulnerabilities, for which patches are available.

Explaining the risks, Dr. Ong and his team believe that within any organization, the main IT security risks come from unpatched Microsoft Windows operating systems and zero day attacks. There are so many different users, visiting such a variety of sites and using a wide range of applications as part of their curriculum. A single laptop or PC running software that has not been updated with the latest software can open the door to viruses and worms entering the entire network.

With the rise in mobile computing, an ongoing challenge for any large education provider is the ability to gain enterprise level visibility into the numerous IT assets being taken into and out of the school. For example, a teacher returning from a school holiday might not be running the latest antivirus on his laptop when he returns. The ACS (Independent) IT team has to be able to identify and update that software before allowing the laptop onto the school network. Importantly they need to do so without disrupting the teacher's work.

The Solution:

The IT Department set about looking for a security solution that could be managed from the central console and used to automatically identify and update any systems that was running an old MS-Windows patch. An important requirement was the ability to automatically assess the state of every system and discreetly update patches from the central console, so that teaching and learning would not be disrupted while the machine was being patched.

Anglo Chinese School (Independent) narrowed its search to four desktop management and security products: Altiris (part of Symantec), BigFix, Lumension® and Numara. After a thorough review of each product, Robert Ong and his team selected Lumension® Patch and Remediation to enable ACS (Independent) to enforce a proactive security policies, managed from the central console, to protect all 700 nodes on the school's network.

Explaining their selection the IT Department was attracted by the ease of deployment and use of

Lumension® Patch and Remediation and the ability to scan and remediate the majority of PCs within 12 hour window period. It was extremely easy to deploy and given the diverse responsibilities of the IT staff, Lumension® provided the best-in-class solution for them. In addition, the fact that it could deploy patches ‘silently' without significant performance impact during lessons makes it even more attractive.

Lumension® Patch and Remediation automates the time consuming process of scanning, updating and securing all IT assets on the school's network. Through proactive elimination of OS and application vulnerabilities, Lumension® reduces security risks and optimizes IT operations across all systems and servers, including MS-Windows; Linux; Unix and Apple Mac operating systems. Lumension® also integrates with Network Access Control (NAC) to update patches on laptops, tablets and desktops before allowing them onto the ACS (Independent) network.

Futher, Lumension's patented Digital Fingerprinting™ Technology provides greater visibility of the software, hardware, drivers and patch status for each of the 700 nodes on the ACS (Independent) network and remediates any outdated patches that are identified on an ongoing basis. In addition, Lumension® allows the school's IT and acceptable use policies to be enforced across all 700 nodes, to protect students, staff and the network from cyber exploits. This is highly beneficial for a busy IT team that needs to constantly monitor the patch health of all nodes that are connected to network. The powerful graphical dashboard and comprehensive reporting features also enables the IT team to demonstrate the school's compliance with IT security regulations.

The IT Department reported that the entire installation and deployment took just one month:

"With Lumension, we were able to patch all laptops and desktops in the school within two to three days, and this made it very attractive to us. Furthermore, Lumension® Patch and Remediation was able to detect and patch other software including Adobe, Firefox and Symantec."

Benefits of Automated Patch and Vulnerability Management:

The IT Department reported that the deployment of Lumension® Patch and Remediation has had an immediate benefit on the school's IT security and risk management as well as making it more convenient for staff to use laptops and tablet PCs to prepare lessons at home.

The team also reiterated that the school IT environment is much safer as they now patch all security loopholes in a timely manner. This also provides them with an additional peace of mind when the teachers do their work at home, with a fully patched and secured laptop or tablet PC. The biggest benefit was for the teachers – they now do not need to bring their laptop or tablet PC to the IT Support Office for remediation and patching as this is done automatically over the network

Green Benefits - ACS (INDEPENDENT) Leads By Example:

To save time and boost IT hardware productivity for staff and students, Lumension® Patch and Remediation can also be used to automate disk defragmentation and clean ups. This particular feature provided ACS (Independent) with an innovative solution to the environmental issue of ensuring that desktops were turned off overnight.

Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) is the very first school in Singapore to use software to enforce its environmental policies. Lumension's centralised control of the network allows ACS (Independent) to enforce rules preventing machines being left on standby during school holidays and weekends, reducing electricity consumption as a result.

This ingenious use of the patch management and remediation software is explained by the IT Department:

"A script was written to shutdown PCs left switched on in the school labs, thus saving energy and cost. With this software, we are also able to provide a quick summary of the computing devices we have in the school".

Conclusion:

As well as increasing their visibility of the IT assets within the school, the IT Department staff at ACS (Independent) have seen their administrative burden reduced as a result of being able to proactively patch all 700 endpoints as soon as vendors release software patches. Lumension® Patch and Remediation has allowed IT staff to devote more time to supporting the school's educational goals through the provision of top quality IT resources:

ACS (Independent) have been able to reduce the number of man-hours spent patching the all the computing devices in the school. In addition, they also used Lumension® Patch and Remediation to patch all their servers during the night, thus eliminating downtime for patching and reboots of their servers. This has greatly increased their availability for requests from teaching staff.

"The PCs in the computer labs are constantly monitored for missing patches, and are patched automatically when detected. This has saved many man-hours for the IT Support Staff – they can now focus their efforts on providing better support to the staff and teachers in other matters".

By automating such vital security tasks, while retaining full centralised control and visibility of the IT network, ACS (Independent) can use its IT staff's expertise to support the achievement of the results for which Anglo Chinese School (Independent) is internationally renowned, ensuring that for pupils and staff, the best is yet to be.

 Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) Gains Control, High Visibility and Security with Lumension® Patch and Remediation