In the current climate we realise it’s crucial for any education organisation to demonstrate cost savings but still provide suitable protection for their students and network. With excellent vendor relationships (Sophos Public Sector Partner of the Year 2010, Websense top selling UK partner reseller partner 2010), Foursys is able to leverage the best licensing options for you, including licences via Eduserv (for Sophos).  Coupled with a comprehensive Professional Services portfolio, Foursys can provide best options to improve security from existing products, whilst ensuring best practice and a coherent strategy moving forwards.  Our aim is to make your organisation more secure, whilst providing the best value possible.

Sophos Endpoint now provides far more than just AV protection.  With the ability to monitor or control applications and devices network managers have far more flexibility to help implement their IT policies.  The Sophos Endpoint now also provides malware protection for remote web users, perhaps home workers or laptop users, by alerting users of websites which have been compromised.

Web traffic

Times change and the internet evolves overnight. It is a big challenge to provide solutions that reduce student exposure to unwanted content and in particular to threats on the web.  Approximately 75% of threats currently come from the web. Very often it is pages on popular sites that become infected as the malware authors seek to gain the widest audience possible.

Facebook and all the web 2.0 social networking sites are a big challenge as they can contain almost anything – URL links, web pages from other sites, videos, applications, and of course malware.  And students want to be permanently connected to these sites.

"There is no online or offline life for the students anymore, pupils are constantly connected" - Steven Bacon, Head of It, Bishops Stortford College  Download web security case study

Many sites now use https (an encrypted web traffic stream) to bypass simple web filtering measures. Many web filtering solutions cannot see inside this type of traffic and so these sites can provide open access to almost any content, including malware threats.

Proxy avoidance is a very common way of avoiding simple web filtering measures that are in place.  It is difficult to accurately control proxy avoidance sites with simple URL filtering alone, as by their nature they do not want to be detected and so frequently change their own URL – many URL filtering databases cannot keep up to date with these changes quickly enough. Foursys has seen lists of proxy avoidance sites that students distribute, sometimes on a daily basis, to enable them to bypass your defences.  

The best way to control all these issues above is to look right inside the web traffic itself so you can see any sites or threats that have been “hidden” by these methods.  Foursys is addressing this with some of the most advanced web security solutions on the planet.

Experience

Working with universities, colleges, academies, schools and primaries, Foursys has over 16 years experience to work out the best options for you.  Organisations such as University College London, University of Cambridge, The Research Councils, Peter Symonds College, Preston College, Bishops Stortford College, Thurston Community College, Swindon Academy, Jewell & Esk College – are a few of the customers Foursys works with. Ask us for references.

Foursys has a dedicated Education Account Manager – Rachel Riches. Contact Rachel on 01223 810910 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it