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Barton County Community College Defends Against Cyber Threats While Enforcing Good Cyber Citizenry on Campus
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Need:
Barton County Community College needed to segment its IT campus in order to efficiently quarantine student dormitories or other areas should they become infected by viruses or malicious code - effectively keeping the rest of the campus safe.
Tech Service Provided:
CDW-G worked with Barton County Community College to select a new firewall and Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution to enhance cyber defenses, while also providing a "dashboard view" of all subnets.
Benefit:
The new solution enables Barton County Community College to simplify and accelerate security management.
Key Learning:
IT security challenges in higher education are constantly evolving. CDW-G understood the unique requirements of an academic network and helped Barton County Community College identify the most appropriate technology tools.
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Academic institutions foster education and self-discovery in safe environments to shape tomorrow’s leaders. These principles must extend from the traditional classroom environment to the growing frontier of technology-powered education to protect students from outside cyber security threats and to ensure they follow proper cyber citizenry guidelines. Barton County Community College (Barton) in central Kansas is strengthening its cyber security posture to protect its 1,200 PC network from increasingly sophisticated online threats, without limiting the impact of IT-driven learning.
To manage more and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, Barton has segmented its IT campus in order to efficiently quarantine the student dormitories or other areas should they become infected by viruses or malicious code - effectively keeping the rest of the campus safe from cyber attack. While this complex security segmentation reduces the risk of widespread infection, it also creates an exponential increase in management requirements. To purchase and implement a project of such complexity, Barton needed a trusted advisor to provide its new cyber security solution and selected CDW Government (CDW-G), a leading provider of technology solutions to governments and educators. Working with CDW-G, Barton implemented a new firewall and Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution to enhance cyber defenses, while also providing a "dashboard view" of all subnets to simplify security management.
Situation: Balancing Cyber Discovery and Security
For more than 35 years, Barton has been preparing students for success through a blend of classroom and practical hands-on education. A majority of Barton’s more than 50 degree programs incorporate the use of technology to prepare students to take their place in today’s workforce. Barton also offers technology-focused degrees including Computer Information Systems and Computer Science. The college’s wired buildings and computer labs ensure that technology access is at the fingertips of its more than 5,000 students. Although the Internet fosters increased communication and research capabilities, Barton’s seven-member IT staff must also maintain vigilance against online threats.
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Existing Challenges: Keeping up with IT Gatekeeper Demands
"The increasing severity of computer viruses and malicious code has transformed information security from a low IT priority to an operational necessity," said Charles Perkins, co-team leader, Information Services at Barton County Community College. "The evolving cyber threats were outpacing our existing firewall technology and making it increasingly challenging to monitor and manage our IT environment efficiently."
College administrators believe they have an obligation to prevent cyber mischief by their students. As a member of KanREN, a statewide Research and Education network that connects leading academic institutions and other organizations, Barton must ensure that student actions do not impact other KanREN members or other businesses.
"As Barton’s IT gatekeepers, we have the dual responsibility of preventing outside cyber threats from affecting our infrastructure while also ensuring that curious students don’t mistakenly unleash viruses within our network or tap outside systems that are private," said Perkins. "We also need to identify and repel malicious code at the edge of our network to prevent any IT problems."
Barton’s IT staff monitors information security logs for suspicious activities of all types. Additionally, Barton’s 14 physical and 31 logical network segments - called subnets - enable the college IT staff to isolate network areas infected by malicious code. This strategy prevents viruses detected in the student dormitory subnet, for example, from spreading across the entire network. Barton’s network subnet capabilities, however, required the IT team to dedicate a considerable amount of time to managing the school’s security infrastructure. The IT team used Sun Microsystems’ SunScreen technology, which required Barton to use vendor-specific software/hardware and did not provide the VPN flexibility required for easy remote access. Importantly, today’s cyber security realities also required Barton’s IT team to view firewall logs in real time with sophisticated querying to gain immediate insight into potential security breaches.
Planning Stages: Mapping Security to College Requirements
The Barton IT team faced numerous options when researching new security technologies. "We required insight from a partner that understands the unique security requirements of an academic network and would help finalize product specifications within our budget," said Amy Oelke, co-team leader, Information Services at Barton County Community College. "We could not afford to make the wrong investment."
Barton selected CDW-G and used its engineering team as a sounding board for product selection and to recommend software licensing and technical agreements that address the college’s requirements. CDW-G combined its extensive knowledge of the needs of higher education customers and comprehensive product line from proven vendors to support Barton’s security requirements. CDW-G helped the Barton IT team prepare for its presentation to the college board of trustees required to approve funding for the new security solution.
Solution: Deploying a Powerful, Flexible Security Infrastructure
Upon receiving IT funding approval, the Barton IT team deployed an initial pilot phase of its new solutions from CheckPoint Software Technologies in late summer 2004. "Deploying a security solution effectively requires a strong understanding of your network, routing and how security product settings may impact other systems or users’ access to important information," said Perkins.
The new and existing security solutions ran in tandem to ensure a high level of security while Barton IT team expanded the pilot program. The new CheckPoint solution went live in November 2004.
Results: Strengthening and Simplifying Cyber Security
"Our experience with our new security solution has been extremely positive and CDW-G has been very responsive during the entire process," said Perkins. The new security solution enables Barton to manage its 14 physical and 31 logical subnets from a single "dashboard" that simplifies and accelerates network traffic monitoring and management. Importantly, the new security solution is intuitive, enabling multiple Barton IT staff members to manage the college’s security infrastructure concurrently. The college’s previous security solution was specialized; only one staff member was trained to manage the technology.
The new solution’s enhanced VPN and log-in capabilities simplify remote network access. The new security solution also consumes less processing power than its predecessor and operates on multiple vendor operating systems and hardware platforms.
Future Goals: Increasing Security Vigilance
Barton has planned a phased approach to broaden its cyber security capabilities. The college is expanding its cyber security management to the application level by increasing its monitoring of security and network infrastructure logs to identify additional malicious activities such as port scans that hackers use to locate network security vulnerabilities. By monitoring malicious activity on the network, IT staff can determine the techniques used to compromise network resources. Utilizing the built-in application intelligence in the CheckPoint software, Barton can identify and block activity at the firewall in real time. The ability to look into each data packet to determine its validity provides another layer of protection and gives Barton’s IT team fine-grained control over all server requests.
Barton also plans to systematically expand its multilayered hardware/software firewall strategy by further segmenting IT resources based on institutional goals to protect student data. The current deployment of IPv6 will bring new security challenges and Barton has laid a solid foundation for the future.
"Cyber security is a dynamic process that requires us to protect the college continually against ever-evolving threats," said Perkins. "We are confident that our new security technologies will provide the flexibility to expand our information defenses and address tomorrow’s requirements. Our strategy to combine security products, policies and vigilance is integral to maintaining a safe and engaging online environment for the Barton community."
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