Case Studies
Read real-world stories of customers who have solved their network problems using our solutions.
Case Studies - Education
Bridgend College delivers "University quality" service with Lightspeed Systems
As networks become more complex, and the range of internet services expand, the need for organisations to become more vigilant is ever greater. The enormous benefit the internet brings has to be balanced against the potential dangers of inappropriate use.
The College
Bridgend College in South Wales was established 80 years ago as a Technical Institute with its roots in the mining industry. Originally providing evening classes to promote the welfare of Miners, it quickly evolved into a day school providing technical education to boys in the age range 13 to 15. After the Second World War, the college expanded, underwent several transformations and in 1975 became the Bridgend College of Technology. Today the College spans five campuses, employs 850 staff and provides over 500 courses to more than 15,000 students.
The Challenge
Leighton Spurgeon, IT Services Manager and Mike Gallivan, IT Services Technical Manager of Bridgend College were concerned that the increasing scale of the College's IT facilities was leading to a situation that was becoming out of hand. Leighton explains, "For several years we simply had no visibility whatsoever as to who was doing what on our network and no insight on the traffic flows. Not only had our network become unmanageable, but we were also completely open to abuse". Leighton and his team deployed several products to try to remedy this situation but with limited success. "Our i-Critical system just couldn't scale up to the performance and level of monitoring we needed for a growing network of over 1,450 Mac and Windows PC's."
The Solution
Bridgend's dilemma is not unique amongst schools and colleges and, whilst containing the problem as best they could, they remained optimistic that there had to be a better solution. The team kept a close eye on the technology market with particular focus on the market leading so called"best of breed" solutions. Bridgend's product selection process had already moved on to a full evaluation of Websense but when Leighton visited the BETT show he became aware of Total Traffic Control from Lightspeed Systems. Total Traffic Control was eye catching because it seemed to address all of Bridgend's issues in a single comprehensive solution. Leighton's reaction was "I need to try this software to see if it does everything it claims to do!" Bridgend College therefore included TTC in its technology review.
The Benefits
Bridgend College undertakes franchised work for some Universities so Internet browsing performance was a key issue. It was imperative that the college deliver the same quality of service that the students would expect from a University. After installing Total Traffic Control in its web filtering role it was immediately apparent that performance was impressive. Total Traffic Control's powerful packet processing engine was delivering a much higher throughput across all the Bridgend sites and the usual daily performance complaints stopped overnight! As well as impressive performance, Total Traffic Control's extensive range of reports gave Bridgend College the visibility into network activity that they really needed. Michael Gallivan, IT Services Technical Manager at Bridgend College commented that "we can see exactly what users are doing on the network and can use that information to establish usage policies and bandwidth management rules based on real as opposed to perceived areas of concern. The management console is very intuitive and easy-to-use. In a few clicks you can get detailed information about what is happening, how much traffic is being generated, by whom, and so on."
Full network integration (Active Directory, e-Directory or LDAP) allows granular policies to be set by users, groups, organisational units, IP address ranges and individual computers enabling implementation of appropriate controls across all age groups. Michael continues "we are now able to set different policies for staff, Higher Education students, Further Education students and 14-16 year old school children who all attend courses at this college."
As Bridgend College deploys further features of Total Traffic Control such as Spam filtering, email journaling and end-point security, Leighton and his team expect to realise considerable cost savings over current solutions as well as reduce the management overhead usually attributed to keeping the network functioning well.
Leighton concludes "The bottom line is that Total Traffic Control is a brilliant product - in my 13 years in IT working in both Private and Public sector, this is the best piece of software I've come across! It gives you unprecedented vision and control of your network activity and I couldn't endorse the product more. "
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Havering Sixth Form College saves over £10,000 with Lightspeed Systems
Schools, colleges and universities are becoming increasingly reliant on IT but as a consequence they are spending an escalating amount of time and money on security solutions to protect both the students and the institution from a number of threats including viruses, spam and unsuitable web content.
Historically, Havering Sixth Form College has addressed these threats by using a range of disparate security solutions from a number of different suppliers. However, since opening in 2001, the college has doubled in size to over 2000 students and found that these different solutions were becoming costly to operate and very difficult to manage.
Pat McConalogue, Head of IT at Havering Sixth Form College, comments, "With the use of disparate, incompatible solutions, we could not get a clear view of network activity. Each summary report was presented in a different format and would often be limited in the information it provided, extra work was then required by the IT team to interpret and correlate this data. Furthermore, using a number of different solutions was proving to be unnecessarily expensive. TTC has enabled us to save not only a huge amount of man hours across the IT team but an estimated £10,000 by consolidating products."
Since deploying TTC Havering has already gained an invaluable insight into its network activity. The College found that over 80% of its past email was spam which is now blocked by TTC. This discovery alone has freed up a significant amount of the IT staff's time and enables them to focus on more strategic work.
Neil Siveter, Senior IT Technician at Havering Sixth Form College, confirms, "TTC now provides a number of comprehensive reports detailing the amount of spam and viruses it has blocked and detected, this now gives us a full view of the network activity from a single source."
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100 Year old school takes modern action against online threats
St Mary's School in Wiltshire has implemented Lightspeed Systems Europe's flagship product Total Traffic Control (TTC) to protect their girls from online bullying and unsuitable internet sites. With the wide use of the internet by pupils within schools, education authorities are having to take action to protect their pupils from unsuitable internet sites and the emergence of online bullying. St Mary's School, Calne, Wiltshire has tackled this escalating problem by heightening their network security measures with TTC, to monitor, control and secure both their internal wireless networks and internet connections.
Both a boarding school and day school of around 300 girls aged 11-18 St Mary's School was founded in 1873 and still treasures its traditional values, which complement the modern curriculum they follow developing successful young women for the 21st century. The curriculum now welcomes the use of the internet as a modern research technique, but with the vast amount of uncontrolled information available to its users, schools need to implement a huge amount of security measures to protect their pupils. Furthermore, with the emergence of instant messaging and social networking sites such as MSN Messenger and MySpace, online bullying is becoming increasingly perceptible, adding to the threats surrounding the internet.
With the use of laptops by the pupils who board at St Mary's, online bullying was a threat the school did not want to see becoming endemic. Therefore TTC was added to their existing security measures in order to enable each individual user to be monitored and protected from such threats with the use of content filtering. Matthew Rus, IT Manager at St Mary's school comments "With the ever increasing use of laptops and wireless networks by the pupils, we as a school have an obligation to protect the girls from harm; whether it's the use of unsuitable sites or online bullying. With the implementation of TTC we can achieve this."
Matthew adds, "TTC not only enables us to monitor the sites accessed across our network but allows us to monitor individual users. As well as being able to set limits according to each different user, we can stipulate the time they can access the internet and indeed what they can access." Earnie Kramer, Technical Director, Lightspeed Systems "Students are now using the internet as a source of communication rather than just a research tool which adds a number of new security threats. We are delighted to be able to offer TTC to schools such as St Mary's in order to help combat these threats and provide a safe, flexible educational environment."
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Dauntsey's School imposes Internet Control with Lightspeed
With an increasing proportion of the National Curriculum requiring Internet access during lessons, many schools are struggling to impose control over pupils' in-lesson activity. From access to inappropriate web sites to IM led distraction, maintaining focus and discipline is a growing problem.
Dauntsey's, which is located near Devizes in Wiltshire, was founded in 1542 and is one of the most popular fully co-educational schools in the country, with some 770 boys and girls, aged between 11 and 18.
Mark Braby, Network Administrator of Dauntsey's School, comments, "Obviously while it is very important for pupils to use the Internet to support the teaching process, the school has to be very careful about controlling access to specific content. As with any school, Dauntsey's has pupils who wish to push the boundaries – it is essential to be able to monitor and control that activity."
Braby comments that "with TTC, Dauntsey's does not need to police pupils' online behaviour every hour. The depth and accuracy of site categorisation provided by Lightspeed Systems is excellent and, using reports, the school has immediate visibility of any attempt by a pupil to access an inappropriate site. The reports also show trends in Internet use and behaviour which is very useful, especially for the school's management team."
Dauntsey's is now using TTC to monitor, control and secure its internal network and internet connection – and plans to utilise the tool's email filtering and spam protection in the near future. Braby adds, "By using a single product to handle the whole range of Internet security issues, Dauntsey's can reduce its IT management overheads and realise significant savings."
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Royal School For the Deaf Signs On!
The Royal School for the Deaf & Communications Disorders (RSDCD) was established by local business leaders in 1825 to meet the needs of deaf children in the Manchester area. The RSDCD moved to its current location in Cheadle Hulme in 1956 and is today running a special school for ages 2-19 and a college for the 19-25 age group. The school and college cater for day and residential students with complex learning needs and communication difficulties providing high-standard care, education and specialist services to promote an individual's participation and success in the community.
The RSDCD operates and provides services to its students 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Extensive use is made of technology to assist the learning experience and students are granted access to computers at anytime during the day and night. As IT Manager for the RSDCD, it is Mike Pearn's responsibility to safeguard its vulnerable students from inappropriate content on the web while also monitoring student and staff activity to ensure that everyone adheres to acceptable usage policies. However, the problem for Mike was that the solution they had been using didn't give the School the level of detailed monitoring that was necessary to fulfil this objective. Mike comments, "the software I have been using until now had limited reporting which gave me little insight into what students were doing on the Internet. This is the main reason why I felt compelled to look for a more granular solution."
Mike attended the BETT show and subsequently shortlisted various security software solutions including Total Traffic Control from Lightspeed Systems. Mike undertook a rigorous evaluation of all these solutions before finally selecting a product. Mike explains "Total Traffic Control was the one solution that ticked all the boxes and easily met our expectations. The school needs to monitor student and staff behaviour in a proactive way to detect dangerous activity before serious damage can be done. Total Traffic Control gives us peace of mind as I can now monitor activities such as search engine queries or Google images and take appropriate steps when e-safety issues arise".
Until the advent of Total Traffic Control, the School had been using a set of six different products to cover areas ranging from Web Content Filtering and Malware Protection to Spam Management and Monitoring. This eclectic mix was putting a lot of strain on workstations and, as Mike explains, "computers would take 5 to 10 minutes to boot causing frustrations for our students". Now that the School has implemented Total Traffic Control the whole network benefits from enhanced performance and can be administered with a single console. Mike continues "We can now focus on a single solution that does everything we want. Not only does the School now benefit from more streamlined security and administration, but it has also been able to substantially reduce year on year costs, an important benefit for a charity".
Case Studies - Non-Profit
Irvine Housing Association has implemented Total Traffic Control to improve the management of its users and reduce IT security costs
Irvine Housing Association, a registered social landlord located in Scotland has implemented Total Traffic Control (TTC) from Lightspeed Systems to provide a unified solution for their security needs, including web content and Spam filtering.
In the past, the Housing Association had restricted internet access to only one or two computers to mitigate against security threats and prevent inappropriate usage. This was becoming increasingly impractical as more and more employees had a legitimate need to access email and the internet to carry out their job. The Housing Association therefore, required a product that would allow them to secure and control internet and email usage so that they could safely roll out network access to the entire organisation.
Angus MacLeod, IT Manager for Irvine Housing Association comments, "We evaluated several products but none really impressed and the prices we were quoted were prohibitive. Lightspeed's TTC, however, caught our attention as it not only offered us the Spam and web content filtering that we required but also offered us several other features within the product such as anti-virus software, a firewall, device control and policy management. Typically we would have had to resort to several separate solutions to get this level of network protection but to get all that functionality in a single product and at an extremely good price was what really convinced us".
TTC delivers powerful and flexible control of virtually every aspect of how the internet and email can be used. Lightspeed's database covers the whole of the known internet and is kept current by a regular download process. Lightspeed also runs regular analysis on every word and link on every page to determine what category each site should be in.
Furthermore, Lightspeed has designed TTC from the ground up to learn and adapt to changing techniques used by spammers. Using automatic feedback from decisions that administrators and users take every day about what email they want and don't want, its database and algorithms are constantly tuned to stop new spam even on the first day it appears.
Earnie Kramer, Managing Director, for Lightspeed Systems Europe, comments, "Now that email is the de-facto standard for business communication, combined with the increasing requirement for employee internet access, organisations need to take security seriously. The sheer variety of threats to a corporate network, from spyware and spam to loss of data caused by unrestricted use of portable devices, leads organisations to increasingly take a holistic one-stop approach to network security."
MacLeod concludes, "Whilst Spam and web content filtering are one of the Housing Association's priorities, the comprehensive functionality of TTC means that I can provide other aspects of protection and control such as securing removable media without having to dip further into the budget."
Case Studies - Corporate
Chartered Accountants Control Security Threats and Data Leakage
Brown Butler, the largest independent chartered accountancy firm in Leeds, has implemented Total Traffic Control (TTC) to provide a unified solution for their security needs, including USB protection and spam filtering.
Brian Canner, IT Director at Brown Butler comments, "USB storage devices were becoming a requirement within our organisation, but we needed to assess how we could monitor and control what data was being taken off the network. A quick solution to this was to lock down every USB port in the firm, but as more people moved away from CD storage and floppy disks towards memory sticks, locking down the USB ports became constrictive to the staff and a hindrance to the organisation."
With TTC, companies do not have to take such constrictive action as the device management area of the program delivers powerful control of all removable media regardless of technology or connection method, including connection by USB, Firewire, and Bluetooth. Even if the laptop is off the network TTC will still monitor all file transfers, enabling complete monitoring of network activity.
Canner adds, "We were using a number of products we had cherry picked from the leading names in the security industry to combat our security threats including spam and the emergence of USB memory sticks which proved to be complex and inefficient. TTC provided us with protection from these threats plus many more in one unified solution, meaning we could remove the lock down on our USB ports but have the ability to monitor and control what activity is occurring and by which user."
Law Firm Consolidates Security Processes
Mills & Reeve has selected Lightspeed System's flagship product Total Traffic Control (TTC) to consolidate existing products and enable a clearer view of their network activity. This is to help predict and resolve future problems within their IT infrastructure.
Graeme Low, Head of IS at Mills & Reeve comments, "We are heavily dependent on inter-office communications through our IT systems. We needed to improve the way we manage the infrastructure and ensure we don't put ourselves at any risk in terms of disruption to the systems that will effect the operation of the business."
Low continues, "TTC will provide us with detailed information across the network allowing us to complete a full analysis of events and highlight any problem areas that may have resulted in the firm experiencing downtime."
TTC provides the facility to understand how the network is being used and enables comprehensive information about user activity. This in turn ensures that network resources are used for the benefit of the organisation. With this complete view of the network and the ability to control what is happening on it, overall protection is achieved.
Established Law Firm protects against internal and external threats
Lupton Fawcett, the Leeds based integrated commercial law firm, has implemented Lightspeed Systems' flagship product Total Traffic Control (TTC). The decision was made in a bid to run a unified product on their network saving time and money, and providing the firm with a seamless line of defence against external attacks and internal threats.
While the firm has very strong commercial expertise, it is committed to meeting the private needs of its wealth-creating commercial clients for wealth-preserving personal legal services. Lupton Fawcett is replacing a number of security products in a migration to a complete Microsoft platform. The products will be replaced with Lightspeed Systems single unified product TTC to ensure all security functionalities are efficient and reliable on the updated platform.
Shaun Denham, IT Manager at Lupton Fawcett comments, "After a comparison between our annual spend running 5 products to protect our network and the cost of implementing TTC it was a simple decision. We would be saving over £20,000 in the next 3 years by using just one product to fulfil our needs. TTC also offers the firm far more functionality than we originally had with our existing solutions giving us greater control of network usage and security.
TTC will provide Lupton Fawcett with the ability to monitor, control and secure its network enabling complete visibility on each user's activity across the network. Whether they are browsing the internet or downloading files to portable memory devices, the action is registered and recorded by TTC providing the ability to monitor and respond to threats that may occur.
Scottish ‘law firm of the year 2006' cuts business risks
Harper Macleod LLP, the award winning Scottish law firm, who was awarded the ‘Law Firm of the Year 2006' accolade at Scotland's two most prestigious law awards, The Law Awards of Scotland and The Scottish Legal Awards has implemented Total Traffic Control (TTC) in order to take a practical approach to content filtering, prioritising traffic across its network, recording email activity and averting the risks associated with ‘plug-and-play' USB devices.
Richard Harvey, IT Director, Harper Macleod comments "As part of our risk management strategy we continually assess risks and threats to the business, as such we felt we required a solution which limits the potential abuse of USB memory sticks and inappropriate access to websites . TTC gives us control of all these activities in a comprehensive and granular solution that allows us to take a proactive approach to protecting vital areas of our business."
Since the inception of Harper Macleod in 1988, the firm has grown rapidly to one of Scotland's top tier large medium sized commercial law firms with a complement of some 210 staff (including 39 Partners). Harper Macleod required a security solution which was aligned to it's continued growth. A key element of the business relates to communication and traffic management between the firm's three main offices and it was felt that TTC offered a robust scalable solution.
Harvey adds, "TTC provides us with a comprehensive solution that is very intuitive and easy to administer. We now have complete visibility and control over any information leaving our offices either by email, USB memory sticks or even CD's being burned, which is essential in an organisation that is reliant on the confidentiality of data. This pre-emptive approach gives our organisation improved security and control over the various threats to our business."
In addition to the security preventions that TTC will provide Harper Macleod, the content filtering capabilities will also enable the company to avoid the risk of staff being professionally offended by inappropriate website usage. Harvey states, "There is increasing coverage in the press regarding employees being offended at work through inappropriate access to websites. This is yet another benefit of TTC as we are now able to monitor the sites accessed across our network and therefore eliminate this risk to our employees."
Priority is to ensure business email and internet access is always available
Taylor Vinters is one of the UK's leading regional firms and their success is confirmed by the outstanding reviews in Legal 500 and Chambers' Guide to the UK Legal Profession. Taylor Vinters single office strategy provides clients with a truly integrated service across any combination of law requirements. With over 200 people working at the firm's Merlin Place building, overlooking the world-famous Cambridge Science Park, they are able to service the legal needs of clients around the world.
Like many law firms,Taylor Vinters had been using a multi-vendor approach to network security, anti-virus, availability monitoring and content checking together with an external Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus checking service for checking all internet email. Steve Sumner, Director of IT for Taylor Vinters, commented,"For sometime we have been looking to find a single solution to provide us with an efficient and well performing internet management system rather than using a mixture of diverse software and suppliers. We also recognised there were several areas on the network where gaps between separate products opened up potential security weaknesses and created reporting ‘blind spots'. We realised that Total Traffic Control would not only replace the existing in-house software but give us a far more comprehensive solution."
Managing performance of internet traffic and email is another crucial area that Total Traffic Control provides. Steve explained,"Our priority is to ensure web and email traffic critical to our business is always available at the optimum level of performance. We can create policies based on our existing Active Directory groups and the built in legal categories to simplify administration. In the event of unusual network usage we are automatically notified and can immediately change traffic priority through the interactive reports before users complain of any slowdown."
Monitoring users to ensure compliance with internet and email usage policies is a way to guarantee that the internet is properly used as a business resource. Steve continued,"We aim to follow best practice for IT usage. We can automatically receive scheduled reports on all manner of internet and email usage. Total Traffic Control has meant we can track Web sites visited, files uploaded (e.g. to Hotmail) or downloaded (e.g. streaming video), instant messages sent or received and even search engine queries (e.g. Google)."
Steve summed up,"We can finally be confident that we have a complete picture of how a single user, a department or the whole firm is using the network and internet and are able to manage that use properly and effectively."
Most Durable Firm tracing its roots back to 1570 chooses Total Traffic Control
According to the Guinness Book of Records, Thomson Snell & Passmore is the ‘Most Durable Firm' tracing its roots back to 1570. Today the firm, with an excess of 200 staff based in Tunbridge Wells, is well structured and equipped to represent clients in an increasingly demanding world. Modern technology provides fast, efficient access to vital information allowing the firm to maintain the highest standards of efficiency and service.
Thomson Snell & Passmore had decided to migrate from Novell to Microsoft and therefore it was an ideal time to review the IT security of the firm. Susanne Jones, ICT Manager for Thomson Snell & Passmore commented, "We evaluated several security and network management options and discovered that Total Traffic Control was the only product that gave us an all-inclusive solution as opposed to the familiar separate products from different suppliers. One of the decisive factors for us was to be self sufficient and to be able to implement the software without the need for expensive external consultants. Several of the features of Total Traffic Control had previously not been available within the firm's infrastructure. One such feature has been the ability to manage the network to ensure availability of critical internet and email resources without the additional cost of increasing our bandwidth. Other essential functions have been the necessity to protect the firm against Spyware and the ability to track email usage."
Susanne's final comment,"We are confident that in the future Total Traffic Control will not only provide us with an efficient and secure environment but also enable us to realise cost savings for the firm."
Mike Peam
IT Manager, The Seashell Trust
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