Catholic Regional College Gives Students, Staff and Parents Safe and Secure Access to Critical Data and Applications on the Network Using WatchGuard Technologies

SEATTLE, Sept. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- WatchGuard® Technologies, a leader in network security, today announced that Catholic Regional College in Melton, Australia, is using WatchGuard's integrated, multi-function security platform (XTM) to help secure and monitor staff, student and parent access to critical network data and applications. The WatchGuard appliance also serves as the primary gateway for information flowing in and out of the network, and supports the school's expanding range of IP addresses, increased throughput demands, and the need for Network Address Translation (NAT).

"We have a lot of the welfare information on the network that is accessed by students and staff, as well as allowing the parents to access information remotely about student grades," said David Micallef, district IT manager at Catholic Regional College. "This means we not only needed to keep the information secure for compliance and privacy reasons, but with increased traffic demands, we needed a scalable solution that could consolidate security functionality and management, without degrading performance."

The school is also required to keep other sensitive data safe, such as payroll and operational information, and control student access to key information and applications both on and off the network. "With more and more mobile devices and PC usage in our schools, it's vitally important to restrict access to certain online or internal applications. With WatchGuard, we can now easily control what information students can access, what applications they can use, and what online websites they can visit and interact with," Micallef said.

Initially deployed just for its firewall capabilities, the team quickly deployed a second WatchGuard XTM 1050 at a central location to leverage the complete feature set available in the Unified Threat Management (UTM) platform, which includes IPS, AntiVirus, URL Filtering, AntiSpam, Application Control and more.

"The XTM offers a variety of capabilities beyond just a firewall. After seeing how well it performed, we deployed a second appliance with all the bells and whistles and now run gateway scanning, content filtering, web filtering, application control and more," Micallef said. "And, because management is centralized through a single UI, the deployment, management and ongoing monitoring of our security infrastructure has been dramatically simplified."

When asked about ROI, Micallef commented, "XTM functioned so well, we bought another device – that's proof of ROI. Our jobs have been made so much easier with WatchGuard – it's given us complete control."

For more information, view the WatchGuard video case study here.

About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.
WatchGuard® Technologies, Inc. is a global leader of integrated, multi-function business security solutions that intelligently combine industry standard hardware, Best-of-Breed security features, and policy-based management tools. WatchGuard provides easy-to-use but enterprise-powerful protection to hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide. WatchGuard products are backed by WatchGuard LiveSecurity® Service, an innovative support program. WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle, Wash. with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visit WatchGuard.com.

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Contacts:
Kerry Desberg
WatchGuard Technologies
(206) 613-3760
[email protected]

Justin Hall
Voxus PR
253-444-5442
[email protected]

SOURCE WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.