23 November 2010
Reviewers:Jeffrey Hatcher, technology director, Miller County School District, Colquitt, GA (left); Cheryl Berry, coordinator of technology, Spartanburg School District #1, Campobello, SC
Products We Use:Smoothwall Network Guardian and UTM-1000 devices
Goals:"We needed Web security to ensure full compliance with cipa and other federal and state requirements," says Hatcher. For Berry, "Our need for additional bandwidth prompted us to look for a new security product. We needed something that would cache a certain percent of our Web traffic, then prove and report it."
How We Use It:"We replaced our previous solution with two Smoothwall UTM-1000 devices in a failover configuration, gaining the additional features we needed while actually reducing our Web security costs," says Hatcher.
Response:"With Smoothwall, we went from failing [in security] to an overall rating of an A," says Berry. "It made all the difference."
Learning Curve:"While the old system would take hours to run a single report, with Smoothwall it only takes three mouse clicks to view the live logs and find what sites are most visited," says Hatcher.
What's Next:"The Smoothwall system has become integral to our planning for network upgrades," says Hatcher. "We're looking to add their e-mail security services next," says Berry.
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