St. Lawrence College Leverages Trend Micro Enterprise Security to Further Educational Mission, Comply With Regulations, and Lower Data Center Costs

CUPERTINO, Calif., March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Trend Micro Inc. announced today that St. Lawrence College, in  Ontario, Canada, has deployed Trend Micro™ Enterprise Security powered by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network™ to protect students and staff from malware, spam, phishing and Web threats.

With more than 800 employees and 6,500 full-time students, St. Lawrence College relies on its robust, technology-rich infrastructure. IT has deployed and managed a variety of technology solutions over the years, striving to create a productive environment for the college community. As part of a major technology refresh initiative, St. Lawrence College underwent an evaluation of Trend Micro™ Enterprise Security solutions. The study convinced IT to switch from their previous vendor to Trend Micro.  

"Fighting Web threats is a priority for us," said Michael Zeleny, technical support specialist for the college. "Students love to surf the Web—being able to detect malware and threats faster is always desirable. Trend Micro™ OfficeScan™ Client-Server Suite gives us Web and file reputation technology that blocks threats before they hit our network, and the Smart Scan Server feature makes new patterns available immediately, without waiting for updates to be pushed down to every endpoint."

St. Lawrence College now implements Trend Micro Enterprise Security to protect endpoints with Trend Micro OfficeScan Client-Server Suite and to protect messaging for the gateway with Trend Micro InterScan Messaging Security Virtual Appliance.    

OfficeScan, powered by the Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ infrastructure, takes advantage of in-the-cloud threat intelligence to lighten the burdens on security solutions and systems while maximizing protection.  OfficeScan has given the college a better performing security solution for every endpoint on the network.

"Our last security solution dragged systems to their knees—OfficeScan is much better in terms of client performance," said Zeleny. "The memory requirement for OfficeScan clients is low, freeing up processor cycles and memory on our systems, which add up to more performance for user applications.  Trend Micro's cloud technology, such as file and Web reputation, is a good idea. With Smart Protection Network, Trend Micro puts us on a good path."

St. Lawrence College also utilizes the plug-in architecture of OfficeScan, which makes it easy for St. Lawrence College to deploy new capabilities as needed without having to redeploy the entire OfficeScan solution. IT is currently testing the latest Intrusion Defense Firewall plug-in.

"OfficeScan plug-ins keep the solution streamlined," said Zeleny. "They are a nice way to give us control of features. We can deploy what we want, and avoid the hard drive and memory overhead for features that we don't want."

With the introduction of InterScan Messaging Security Virtual Appliance at the gateway, the college gained protection from spam, viruses, spyware, phishing, blended threats, and data loss resulting from email-borne threats. Filtering capabilities help IT comply with regulations and college policies, and the VMware Ready virtual appliance deployment allows them to lower operating costs in the datacenter.

"Trend Micro messaging security and our virtualized environment have reduced the CPU and memory requirements for security while increasing the spam catch rates and overall protection," said Zeleny. "The in-the-cloud reputation services detect threats faster, help to mitigate them more quickly, and also reduce the time and resources consumed for updates. It's really nice to see Trend Micro moving in this direction. With Trend Micro we gained a multilayered spam solution, Web threat protection, and a security vendor that was aligned with our commitment to virtualization."

The college's VMware platform has simplified the deployment of solutions such as the security software virtual appliance. "Under VMware, it was very easy to deploy InterScan Messaging Security Virtual Appliance, and it took less than an hour," said Zeleny.

Today, with its virtualized messaging security solution, IT enjoys a reduction in the time required to manage email security. InterScan Messaging Security Virtual Appliance takes less than 10 minutes a day to check on status, and user complaints about spam and other email security issues have also decreased, resulting in additional time savings for the busy staff.

VMware READY VIRTUAL APPLIANCE

Trend Micro fully supports its virtual appliance solutions with VMware servers. The InterScan Messaging Security Virtual Appliance is a validated VMware Ready solution that gives customers like St. Lawrence College the benefits of the effective working relationship between VMware and Trend Micro.

"Trend Micro's relationship with VMware—resulting in the VMware Ready validated virtual appliance—was a big contributing factor to our switch to Trend Micro security solutions," said Zeleny. "In the next phase of our virtualization initiative, we are creating an ESX cluster in our DMZ so we will be able to use VMotion to move our InterScan Messaging Security Virtual Appliance to another server on the fly. We'll have a highly secure and very manageable solution that allows us to take down a server for maintenance without introducing vulnerabilities."

Trend Micro Enterprise Security is a tightly integrated offering of content security products, services and solutions powered by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network. Together they deliver maximum protection from emerging threats while minimizing the cost and complexity of security management.

The Smart Protection Network combines cloud-based file, Web and email reputation technologies, feedback loops and the expertise of TrendLabs(SM) security researchers to provide the continuous real-time threat detection and protection services that power Trend Micro Enterprise Security solutions.

About St. Lawrence College

With campuses in three small to mid-sized cities, St. Lawrence College serves a wide and diverse catchment area. What sets the college apart is its ability to offer a world-class educational experience without the hassles of big-city living. The college's educational philosophy is to work harder to put students' interests at the forefront of everything they do. That means delivering relevant, in-demand courses supported by superior faculty and staff, state-of-the-art facilities (including safe and comfortable residences), and a wide variety of support services. The results have been both reassuring and exciting: the college's overall approval rating for learning environment, quality of faculty, and excellence in graduate preparation is among the highest for community colleges in Ontario and testimony to its ability to consistently exceed expectations. www.stlawrencecollege.ca

SOURCE Trend Micro Inc.