Mars Hill College Case Study

SafeConnect and Proactive NAC Security

Who’s Afraid of Back to School?

Challenge

Mars Hill College was experiencing significant network difficulties during critical back to school (B2S) periods. Eighty percent of the student population resides on campus—90 percent were inundated with virus and spyware programs. Due to the tremendous virus traffic and overloaded switches, the entire dorm network had to be taken off-line at the beginning of each semester. The ongoing battle was consuming 80 percent of staff time spent monitoring the network, tracking problems, and fixing them. The majority of the workday was dedicated to putting out fires with virtually no time for other tasks. Although the school had established computer policies, there was no way to enforce them. Mars Hill wanted a way to proactively identify problems on the front end – before they reached the network and caused it to fail.

Solution

SafeConnect™ provided an innovative alternative to automate enforcement of the school’s acceptable use policies. Users are educated about what security safeguards they are missing and receive instructions on how to meet required network access policies. Mars Hill was able to eliminate the labor intensive tasks associated with ensuring endpoint security policy compliance in a very cost-effective manner that required no network infrastructure changes. “We are seeing tremendous time savings for the IT Department, especially at the start of each semester. With the SafeConnect system, the responsibility for correcting virus and spyware problems is back in the student’s hands. The system prompts tell them what is wrong so they can fix it themselves. Not only is it a time-saver for the IT Department, it installs a sense of responsibility, knowledge, and confidence in the students,“ says Steve Mace, Network Administrator. “The ultimate testimonial to its success is that our dorm network is exponentially more secure and we no longer have to shut it down at the start of each semester.“

SafeConnect Benefits

The Impulse SafeConnect™ system provides an open network access control (OpenNAC™) solution that easily integrates into vendor-diverse network environments. The inherent scalability advantages of SafeConnect’s distributed software architecture and managed support approach enables institutions to address their NAC enterprise requirements in a cost-effective manner.

SafeConnect OpenNAC offers an easy to implement and support endpoint policy management alternative that seamlessly connects into an institution’s existing multi-vendor infrastructure, and provides an evolutionary path to maturing NAC industry standards like IEEE 802.1x.

• Prevents unauthorized user access to wired, wireless, and VPN networks.
• Ensures users maintain compliance with anti-virus, anti-spyware, Microsoft security patches, P2P file sharing software, and custom endpoint security policies through real-time security posture validation.
• Automates the isolation of non-compliant devices at Layer2 using I-LAN quarantine technology and provides individualized remediation guidance independent of network switch hardware.
• Manages flexible role-based policies for students, faculty, staff, and guests.

i-LAN Quarantine Technology

Isolates non-compliant users from accessing Layer2 and Layer3 network resources and limits user access to designated internal or external remediation domains, where it communicates the actions required to become compliant with the institution’s endpoint security policies and regain network access.

“The SafeConnect system has made our back-to-school security challenges a non-event.” Steve Mace Network Administrator, Mars Hill College

About Mars Hill College

Founded in 1856, Mars Hill College is the oldest college in western North Carolina on its original site and is affiliated with the North Carolina Baptist Convention. Selected again as one of the best colleges in the nation according to U.S. News and World Report’s annual “America’s Best Colleges” report, Mars Hill jumped several spots in the rankings, moving up to 38 from 45 in 2005.