WEBROOT CUSTOMER CASE STUDY » FRANKLIN COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Franklin County Public Schools
Protects Endpoints with Webroot
BACKGROUND
The Franklin County Public Schools, located in southwest Virginia, is a government-funded educational system
that supports grades K-12. The mission of Franklin County Public Schools is to prepare students for lifelong
learning and employment.
THE CHALLENGE
The Franklin County Public Schools has steadily incorporated the use of desktops, laptops and mobile devices into
their administrative operations and within the classroom. The school system supports 1,300 employees, serves
more than 7,500 students, and secures over 5,500 endpoint devices, including both school and personally owned
devices (PODs) that access its network.
In recent years, the number of devices has increased exponentially, and the five-member information technology (IT)
team was faced with the challenge of providing support for thousands of devices that were regularly used by staff
and students, across numerous campuses. Coming up against severe malware infections originating from suspicious
sites and links, as well as periods of concentrated attacks, the IT team regularly spent up to twelve hours per week on
remediation, reimaging devices and managing multiple security solutions.
Frequently confronted with security issues that stem from students and staff unknowingly browsing malicious websites
and clicking dangerous links, Franklin County Public Schools realized their traditional signature-based antivirus solutions
were allowing malware into their network. To improve operational efficiency and maximize protection throughout the
district, the IT team needed a virus and malware detection solution that provided real-time protection against new
threats, eliminated the need for additional security software, and enabled the small IT team to easily manage endpoint
protection across more than a dozen campuses.
“Our biggest concern is ensuring school systems and personally owned devices
do not affect our internal network,” said John Vehmeier, network administrator for
Franklin County Public Schools. “This concern is compounded by the worry that we
don’t have the manpower to concentrate on securing and monitoring
all of these devices.”
Copyright © Webroot Inc. » April 2014
AT A GLANCE
Vertical: Education (K-12)
Network Administrator: John Vehmeier
Endpoints: 5,500
Employees/Students: 8,800+
Website: http://frco.k12.va.us/
BEFORE
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Spent 8-12 hours per week remediating
threat damage and managing security
Required multiple antivirus tools to solve
security issues
Antivirus scans took 1 hour for workstations
and 5-6 hours for servers
Infected workstations remained unusable for
days while remediation was performed
AFTER
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Security management requires only 1 hour per
week
Complete Webroot SecureAnywhere® solution
eliminates need for additional security
Antivirus scans complete in only 2-5 minutes
Rollback feature restores systems to a previous
state, eliminating need for remediation
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CASE STUDY FRANKLIN COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
THE SOLUTION
RESULTS
After years of working with different antivirus products that either overburdened
older hardware and software offerings (including Windows XP) or simply were
ineffective, Franklin County Public Schools chose Webroot SecureAnywhere®
Business – Endpoint Protection after several product trials. Its unique cloud-based
architecture not only provides significantly improved protection, but also simplifies
management of the entire system.
Before switching to Webroot, Franklin County Public Schools spent up to twelve
hours each week remediating attacks and managing security. Since deploying
Webroot SecureAnywhere Business – Endpoint Protection, they have reported a
significant reduction in the number of malware infections and the journaling and
rollback functionality drastically reduced support overheads by removing the need
to reimage infected machines. The web-based management console has also had
a dramatic effect on productivity levels, providing real-time reporting of security
issues and enabling the IT staff to administer security on endpoints no matter
where they are, on or off the district’s network.
“Previously, we’ve used Symantec, Vexira and most recently Vipre. Vipre had
been a lightweight and reliable solution but subsequent versions of the software
put more of a burden on our network servers and older workstations and they
were not catching as many threats as they had in the past,” said Vehmeier. “We
were treading water and requesting additional funding to increase our support
team just to keep our devices malware-free and assist users in the classroom.
That’s no longer an issue. Webroot’s cloud-based security platform blocks new
threats more quickly, and enables administrators to manage endpoint security
anytime, no matter where they are located on campus.”
In addition to resolving time management issues, the light footprint and powerful
security provided by Webroot SecureAnywhere Business – Endpoint Protection
covers PCs, Mac® computers, and Android™ and iOS® smartphones and tablets.
The comprehensive protection capability was incredibly important to Franklin
County Public Schools, making the Webroot solution an ideal fit for its diverse
and highly-distributed IT environment. The Webroot System Cleaner feature,
which can save disk space by cleaning up unnecessary files and protect privacy
by wiping out records of browsing and PC usage, also heavily influenced the final
purchase decision.
“Webroot SecureAnywhere Business – Endpoint Protection solved several problems
we had, including maintaining another application and physical server and protecting
older workstations that did not have the processing power to run a traditional antivirus
solution. With the cloud-based Webroot architecture, we were able to manage and
remediate devices that rarely came onto our network,” added Vehmeier.
The Webroot solution’s quick install time and system scans – both requiring less
than two minutes to complete – and background updates do not tax the schools’
network bandwidth and, most importantly to its IT team, require minimal manual
supervision. The five-member IT team currently has no issues supporting detection
and remediation. Since adopting Webroot, Vehmeier estimates that time spent
managing security has been reduced to an hour per week, rather than the previous
twelve hours per week.
“With other security solutions, we’d spend hours and days on individual infected
stations, recovering lesson plans and crucial data. Once we transferred exclusively
to Webroot, we just stopped having those types of issues and have been able to
focus our resources on taking care of non-virus issues and testing new systems,”
said Vehmeier.
The time saved as a result of switching to Webroot has allowed Franklin County
Public Schools to provide faster, more efficient support to faculty and students.
The IT team is now able to take a significantly more proactive approach to their
work, and have begun implementing a pilot BYOD (bring your own device) program,
allowing additional devices into the network for the convenience of the schools’
educational and administrative staff.
“Webroot is hands down the best solution we’ve seen,”
Vehmeier reports. “Traditional solutions just don’t work
in today’s environment. Webroot’s innovative cloud
architecture is different, and that’s a good thing. If you need
to protect your workstations anytime and anywhere, use
SecureAnywhere.”
About Webroot
Webroot is the market leader in cloud-based, real-time internet threat detection for consumers, businesses and enterprises. We have revolutionized internet security to protect all the ways you
connect online. Webroot delivers real-time advanced internet threat protection to customers through its BrightCloud® security intelligence platform, and its SecureAnywhere™ suite of security
products for endpoints, mobile devices and corporate networks. Over 7 million consumers, 1.5 million business users and 1.3 million mobile users are protected by Webroot. Market-leading security
companies, including Palo Alto Networks, F5, Cisco, Aruba, NetCitadel, GateProtect, Microsoft and others choose Webroot to provide advanced Internet threat protection for their products and
services. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Colorado, Webroot is the largest privately held Internet security company in the United States – operating globally across North America, Europe and
the Asia Pacific region. For more information on our products and services, visit www.webroot.com.
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Copyright © Webroot Inc. » April 2014