The Upper Canada School District had a network nightmare on its hands. But CIO Jeremy Hobbs implemented a NAC solution. Now the kids are allright, and so is the network
What do you get when you take 2,000 teachers, 32,000 students, 3,000 administrative and support staff spread out over 120 sites over an area twice the size of Connecticut?
You get the Upper Canada School District. You also get a network security and usage nightmare.
Just ask Jeremy Hobbs, CIO for the school district. "We found the manageability gap was so huge," he said. "With 120 sites and administrative centers, when [the network] was scaled out for 40,000 users coming and going, the management overhead couldn't be done."
According to Hobbs, he was also dealing with three big business problems. First, the district needed a wireless system and it couldn't afford to do it by buying 500 wireless access points. There was also pressure from guest devices frequently coming onto the network. And then there was the continuous inherent risk associated with principals, teachers, and students all sharing the same network.
Add the fact that Hobbs was dealing with one user group -- teachers -- that was not going to applaud restrictive security measures or security measures that require constant IT involvement, and another user group -- students -- that would use the network to threaten or ridicule other students or to try to hack into the school's database, and it added up to quite a predicament.
And, because this is still a school system, any IT investment required an ability to improve student achievement as well.
"We find that there is an increasing reliance on data in the classrooms," said Hobbs. "Teachers need to be mobile. We don't want to force people to work at technology. We want to bring it to them. Special needs kids need to be able to download things so they can be integrated into a regular classroom and not feel ostracized."
Hobbs looked for an found a Network Access Control (NAC)solution from Nevis Networks that not only enabled his system to be managed from one central location, but also customized network access for improved security and ease of use and provided an infrastructure tool that could be used to improve student learning.
"We put in the foundational technology, and the payoff is in kids learning," said Hobbs.
Putting Teachers in Control The kids are learning and they are also not getting into trouble -- or, more accurately, not being able to get into trouble. One of the major drivers for Hobbs in looking for a new network access and management tool was security. He would get requests from teachers to limit certain student's access to the Web because they would be surfing the Internet during class rather than working. Or becuase they were using social networking tools as a way of cyberbullying -- threatening other students, making fun of them, or spreading rumors about them. "The teachers wanted a switch to shut kids off from the Web," said Hobbs.
Previously, teachers would have had to call IT to effect the changes, which were tricky because the system's security measures were based on the physical PCs. "We wanted an identity-centric network," said Hobbs.
An identity-centric network would also take the onus off forcing both students and teachers to be on dedicated devices, which also made hosting the myriad of volunteers and guests who frequently populate a school system's network so complicated.
Next Page: A flexible, adaptable system
