Serving over 27,000 students and 2,500 faculty and employees, the University of San Carlos (USC) in Cebu City, Philippines, is the premier university in Cebu and one of the top 10 leading universities in the country.
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, including the hacking of the university’s website from time to time. USC needed a robust yet simple-to-manage and resource-friendly security solution to meet its requirements.
Rather than renewing its previous solutions, which would have cost more than it originally paid for them, USC began looking for a simple security solution from a single vendor that it could entrust with the security of its network, web and email servers, and 2,800 workstations.
“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 and its local partner All Links Trading helped USC transition easily to a suite of Sophos UTM appliances to secure its web and mail servers and control web applications, and Endpoint Protection to secure its desktops against sophisticated threats and data loss.
Before, USC needed to check separate solutions protecting traffic to the web and that managing traffic on the Local Area Network (LAN).
With a Sophos SG 650 UTM, now the university has the capability to protect and enhance bandwidth performance of campus public web servers, the local network and Wi-Fi network.
Via the UTM, USC’s IT team has central management to enforce security policies across two campuses, while conserving bandwidth to keep staff and students productive.
And with Sophos’s single management interface, detailed logs and reporting functions, there is a clear path for the university’s future roadmap to centralize management of all five university campuses at their main data center.
Just like USC, there are many organizations of all sizes with costly security systems that don’t meet their current or future needs.
Download the University of San Carlos case study learn more about how Sophos solutions can provide simple yet complete security and low cost of ownership for your organization.
