Val do Rio Professional School selects WatchGuard to upgrade and strengthen Wi-Fi network
The Challenge
Escola Profissional Val do Rio (EPVR) offers courses in the technological, social and health areas, aimed at students who seek a quality practical education, have completed the 9th year of schooling and are under 20 years of age. Since 1989, the Val do Rio Professional School has made a name for itself in the technical training of secondary level students and has maintained as its main goal to increase the employability of students who complete the training. The school's headquarters, in Oeiras, is also
It is the second largest school in the country in this segment. Estoril also offers courses in the social and health areas.
EPVR has a large number of remote users - 700 on cloud platforms (Office 365, LMS learning management system, CRM), 40 on remote access (RDP, VPN). At some point, the school felt the need to renew its infrastructure, increasing its capacity for mobile access via VPN, reinforcing internet content filtering and centralising network management for its two sites.
The aim was to have a powerful Wi-Fi network, scaled to the needs of the centre and adapted to the type of use and density of users. In addition to the high density of users of the network, which motivated the need to provide faster and fluid access, there was also the important issue of ensuring that this same access is made properly and safely by students and staff, respecting the pre-established access policies.
In parallel, it was a key factor to have Wi-Fi network security capable of automatically detecting and stopping the six most common categories of attack within seconds, without ever compromising on performance.
The Solution
The School entrusted SysOne, WatchGuard's Silver partner in Portugal, with the implementation of this project due to its in-depth knowledge of the market, its experience and proven technical expertise.
Founded in 2018, SysOne assumes itself as a young and dedicated company, having more than a decade of experience in Information Technology. Focused on areas such as Cybersecurity and Cloud and On-Prem Infrastructure Solutions, it aims to distinguish itself from others by creating a close and trustful relationship with the client, providing professional solutions and managed services with 24h/7 support adapted to the needs of each one, based on budget respect.
Its client portfolio is made up of private and public sector entities, with a presence in the Portuguese and North American markets.
The choice of WatchGuard was, in turn, based on the performance/cost ratio of the solutions chosen and the fact that there was already previous experience with the brand, since the school already had an appliance from the manufacturer, which was now complemented with additional services.
The acquisition included a WatchGuard high availability solution, composed of two units of the Firebox M370 firewall appliance configured for redundancy, and intended to replace the current WatchGuard M300 model, equipment in production at the premises of the Val do Rio Professional School in Oeiras, as well as its renewal for another 1 (one) year, for use at the Estoril branch.
These appliances are part of WatchGuard's award-winning Firebox security platform. The platform not only offers the most complete set of unified security controls on the market, but also provides solutions to address new and evolving network threats, including advanced malware and ransomware.
16 new WatchGuard Access Points, model AP325, were also acquired to replace the current equipment in production at the Escola Profissional Val do Rio facilities in Oeiras and Estoril, 12 of which are in Oeiras and 4 in Estoril, in order to integrate with the existing WatchGuard Firewalls.
WatchGuard's AP325 is an indoor access point equipped with multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO), allowing multiple devices to connect at the same time, which improves the experience for everyone connecting to the protected Wi-Fi network. This access point also includes two simultaneous 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz radios compatible with 802.11a/n/ac Wave 2, 802.11b/g/n, two spatial transmissions and data rates up to 867 Mbps and 300 Mbps, respectively. It has been designed with environments like the Val do Rio school, with a high density of users, in mind.
Results
Thanks to this implementation, EPVR is now properly equipped to cope with the intensive use of network resources, while ensuring the security and connection speed necessary for e-learning operations and remote user access.
With the solutions in place, the school now has advanced security features as part of the three-year Total Security Suite subscription, namely intrusion prevention services, application control, antivirus, spam blocking, malicious web content blocking, reputation defence, data loss prevention, advanced persistent threat (APT) blocker and threat detection and response, among others, protecting the school 24×7 from today's sophisticated cyber threat landscape.
The technological combination of WatchGuard solutions implemented by SysOne has brought very positive results to the school. As the use of wireless has become a necessity for the school's performance, it has also become more exposed to risk, and the Wi-Fi network provided by WatchGuard has provided more stability and scalability to the wireless IT infrastructure, significantly improving the level of security of the connections.
With the implemented solution, the school has 'separate waters', with network segregation by user profiles. Not to mention that there are now no blind spots, i.e. lack of coverage, in any of the school's poles.
This was possible thanks to the installation of AP325, the ideal access points for medium-density environments that include 802.11 ac Wave 2 and MU-MIMO technology, and that facilitate the connection of several devices at the same time, providing a solid system when it comes to wireless connectivity.
These APs also feature WIPS enabled, WatchGuard's patented wireless intrusion prevention system that delivers high quality wireless performance by ensuring consistent security policies are applied across all connected devices, helping to protect the entire school environment and student and staff connections from Wi-Fi attacks, while providing automatic protection against the six known Wi-Fi threat categories.