University of San Carlos Turns to Sophos for Simple, Comprehensive Protection of its Campus Network

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The premier university in Cebu deploys a suite of Sophos UTM appliances and Sophos Endpoint Protection Advanced to safeguard over 27,000 students and 1,500 employees against sophisticated threats and data loss

Cebu, Philippines. September 3, 2015 – The University of San Carlos (USC), the premier university in Cebu and one of the top 10 leading universities in the Philippines, has deployed Sophos for simple, comprehensive protection of its campus network. A suite of Sophos UTM appliances, together with Sophos Endpoint Protection Advanced (EPA), were implemented to protect over 27,000 students and 1,500 faculties and employees against sophisticated threats and data loss.

As USC continued to expand with more users and devices connected to the network, bandwidth consumption became an issue – resulting in decreasing security of its network, as many security features could not be turned on.

With a staff of just nine people, the USC IT team found itself overwhelmed by security incidents. The previous security solutions installed had also proved to be costly and difficult to maintain.

Instead of renewing its previous solutions, which would have cost more than it originally paid for them, USC needed a robust yet resource-friendly security solution to meet its needs. During the evaluation, the IT team was impressed with Sophos’ ease of installation, and its robust and comprehensive security features.

Sophos and its local partner All Links Trading helped USC transition easily to a suite of Sophos UTM 425 and 525 appliances to secure its web and mail servers and control web applications, as well as Sophos EPA to secure 2,800 workstations across the campuses.

“We were always on the lookout for a single brand that could do it all and we found that with Sophos’s strong security protection, easy maintenance, a user-friendly set up – all with a low total cost of ownership,” said Rhea Rowena Rivera, USC’s Head of Information Resource Management, Technical and Networking Services and Helpdesk Services.

Sophos’ single management interface, which eliminates the complexity of security control management, detailed logs and reporting functions, is also in line with the university’s future roadmap to centralize the IT management of all campuses to their main data centre at the Talamban campus.

With the centralized management platform, and the integration of EPA Web filtering features with that of the UTMs, USC can now define and enforce security policies across the campus network centrally, including the rolling out of web policies and blocking out access to entertainment and bandwidth-intensive video sites. The IT team can also easily get a bird’s eye view of both the traffic to the Web and traffic to the LAN to monitor and detect any malicious network traffic.

“We are delighted to be able to work with USC in safeguarding their campus network against sophisticated threats and creating a safe learning environment for both the teaching faculty and students,” said Sumit Bansal, Director for ASEAN, Sophos. “Our “Security made simple” approach at Sophos brings tremendous value to USC by not just simplifying security management but also enhancing the overall experience for the user.”

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