eTrust Antivirus Provides Automated Virus Signature Updates

The threats of computer viruses and unauthorized records entry are concerns to any institution with email and Internet access. But for Colorado Springs School District 11 (District 11), the number of students with unrestricted access virtually guaranteed that if a worm were circulating, it would infect the district’s systems.

A public school system with local, state and federal funding, District 11 has 39 elementary schools, nine middle schools, five high schools and five district charter schools that educate more than 32,000 students— all with access to the district’s 11,000 desktop computers—so the threat of a virus is huge.

District 11 sees nearly 2 million virus hits per day. With no virus protection and, then, with an inadequate solution, these viruses ran rampant, causing the district’s 600 servers to malfunction on a regular basis, affecting staff productivity, IT repair time, and student and teacher access to academic information.

“There was a time that our network was down more than it was up,” said Dennis Shultz, Executive Director of Information Services. District 11 knew that it needed a solution.

	As a school system we are an open target, so detecting and preventing network intrusion is vital.
		Dennis Shultz, Executive Director of Information Services Colorado Springs School District 11

The Challenge: Realizing Antivirus Needs

The antivirus software from an outside vendor was ineffective. There was no central management capability and each workstation had to be individually managed—an enormous task with limited staff and 11,000 desktops. Many of the computers were not receiving virus updates, leaving them vulnerable to attack, and many users were simply deleting the software from the computers in order to continue their unrestricted access to websites and email.

CA Reliability Creates Confidence

District 11’s IT team turned to Computer Associates (CA) for a more comprehensive solution: eTrust. Touted as one of the best brands in the industry, the district knew it was reliable and effective from previous experience with CA and its solutions. “We had an excellent working relationship with CA teams,” explained Denis Ball, lead network engineer. The centralized management feature and automated signature updates of eTrust Antivirus impressed District 11, as did its competitive pricing. And, since District 11 had CA’s Unicenter Network and Systems Management already in place, the IT team knew the solution would fit perfectly into its environment.

The Benefits of eTrust Antivirus

When eTrust Antivirus was deployed to the desktop computers and servers in District 11, the systems experienced increased stability almost immediately. The networks were protected from infection and were operating nearly trouble-free.

“After implementing eTrust Antivirus, we have had no known, visible viruses coming through email systems. Our servers weren’t filling up and crashing, and our workstations were and are virus free,” said Shultz. “Student productivity is up, largely because they’re not crashing their homework.” Shultz added that server uptime went from “more down than up” to almost 99% functionality on a consistent basis. The district realized a significant savings in employee time and productivity, and the time spent detecting and repairing virus damage decreased from 3,500 to 52 hours a year.

The servers and desktops remain well protected with automated updates from eTrust. “It gives us an overall view of the workstations and takes the guesswork out of making sure signatures and drivers are updating,” said Shultz. “The centralized management feature has saved us a significant amount of time.”

Creating a Complete Solution With  eTrust Audit and eTrust Intrusion Detection

“As a school system we are an open target, so detecting and preventing network intrusion is vital,” said Shultz. The logging feature of eTrust Audit allows Shultz to monitor District 11’s server activity, plus it offers exceptional user activity tracking and alert handling.

The eTrust Intrusion Detection solution enables successful operation within the strict legal security requirements of school systems. The IT team can now monitor sessions, and capture and record activity that will build a solid foundation for continuous improvements in security. All the audit logs can be put into an SQL database repository, where records can be archived. “We are creating an environment in which we can gather information. With eTrust Intrusion Detection, we can stop activity that we don’t want,” said Shultz. “eTrust solutions go hand in hand. They are very thorough,” he added. “We have been able to monitor and track undesirable activities and unauthorized log-ons — which solves long-standing issues.”

District 11 is looking to eTrust Intrusion Detection for URL blocking in the future. “There are lots of features that we haven’t made use of yet,” said Shultz, “but we plan to use these powerful tools to their fullest capacity, and we expect to realize more and more benefits going forward.