SchoolAdvisor chatted with Rhenish Primary’s (Stellenbosch) Principal, Gary Skeeles, to find out why SonicWall was their chosen cybersecurity partner since their school decided to take on a blended learning approach.
We wanted to find out what new cybersecurity measures they needed to put in place with many more devices on the school grounds and how SonicWall was able to meet all these. This is what Gary had to say:
Q1: How many teachers and pupils does your school have?
A: 800.
Q2: What cybersecurity and firewall measures did you have in place before SonicWall, and any specific reasons why you decided to change?
A: We had the ISP firewall offsite. This was not nearly comprehensive enough.
Q3: What were your school’s primary needs or problems you sought to resolve by choosing SonicWall?
A: We decided to install SonicWall as we now have a blended learning approach with students bringing their own devices. With that many more devices onsite, there was a huge additional concern with regard to safety of online activities.
We also wanted to be able to control the access to preserve bandwidth by ensuring access was restricted to only school related activities.
Q4: How did you deploy and use your SonicWall solution to resolve this?
A: Content Filtering (both http and https), Gateway AV, Anti-Spyware, and Intrusion prevention on the SonicWall. Also LDAP integration, SSO, SSL authentication and radius server with captive portal.
Q5: Describe the top benefits your organization has received because of implementing your SonicWall solution?
A: Peace of mind and early report indicate a significant amount of virus prevention.
Q6: Please describe your overall experience of SonicWall and your SonicWall solution?
A: Some initial teething issues around staff having restrictions to sites they were used to accessing. But, these were resolved quickly and it’s all been smooth since then.
Q7: Would you recommend SonicWall to other schools and why?
A: Yes definitely. The peace of mind that children are browsing safely is massive.