Sophos – a security leader in the U.K. Education Sector
Sophos has been assisting schools in the U.K. to protect pupils and staff from infected software, harmful content, and other threats. The security products we offer and data protection solutions combine email, endpoint, and web security, to deliver user-friendly, award-winning solutions that safeguard the lives of 6 million teachers, administrators, and students worldwide.
Our education sales and technical experts in our partner community, as well as at Sophos U.K., understand the sector’s unique requirements. We’re here to assist school management, and I.T. teams pick and implement solutions to accommodate their ever-changing requirements and assist them in complying with government guidelines and legislation.
You can see our many case studies and references on how we’ve helped schools, like yours, on our dedicated U.K. Education webpage on sophos.com.How Sophos helps U.K. Education Establishments meet Prevent directive recommendationsSophos – a security leader in the U.K. Education Sector.
In what ways can Sophos assist you in ensuring Government recommendations in the Prevent directive are met?CONTEST is H.M. Government’s strategy to safeguard the U.K. from terrorist attacks abroad. One component that CONTEST has is its Prevent strategy. The goal of Prevent is to stop individuals from becoming terrorists or in support of the cause of terrorism.
To address the growing threat of radicalism H.M. Government has released the Consultation Document on Prevent. It contains guidelines for various organizations, such as colleges, schools, and higher educational establishments. The approach is comprehensive and covers all aspects of counter-terrorism.
The guidance on I.T. systems in schools is limited to the following: “Specified authorities will be expected to ensure students are safe from terrorist and extremist material when accessing the internet in school, including by establishing appropriate levels of filtering.”www.legislation.gov.uk (page 15, section 71). Sophos solutions can help you ensure these Government recommendations in the Prevent directive are met while addressing many other security and control concerns that schools experience in providing internet access and I.T. systems to students and staff.
Introducing Sophos UTMSophos UTM integrates complete security software within a single appliance. You can select the level of protection you require when you need it and then install your solution on the system that’s best suited to your requirements, whether it’s hardware, software, or a virtual appliance. Each has the same feature set, regardless of whether you’re protecting between 10 and 5000 users. The simple, online-based management console provides easy control of your computer’s security. By using Sophos UTM, you can keep students secure from extremist and terrorist material while browsing the Web and also combat the increasing distribution of malware via “drive-through download” from legitimate but compromised websites.
SophosLabs Difference SophosLabs Difference SophosLabs is behind the behind-the-scenes, gathering, correlating, and analyzing data to offer the most effective security for each Sophos customer. We’ve created a state of a modern extensive data analysis system that we can efficiently process millions of messages, URLs, files, and other data items that enter our labs every day. We utilize the data and have a wealth of knowledge to keep our A.V. engine and the URL Filter Database, containing 35 million+ websites in the 96 categories, in front of new threats.
Sophos UTM is directly linked to SophosLabs to ensure the most current protection. Our infrastructures in Australia, Hungary, England, and Canada let us follow the sun, ensuring that our security analysts are available to deal with emerging threats and analyze submissions from customers 24/7/365.SophosLabs is why we are Sophos, an unbeatable security provider for I.T. Contrary to other security solutions that depend on third parties, Sophos develops its URL-filtering databases and A.V. engines independently. Sophos customers are always first to be protected from the most recent threats and harmful websites. Sophos is also an Internet Watch Foundation member.
Sophos is determined to make the internet more secure and has joined forces with Internet Watch Foundation to maintain an extensive list of websites identified as criminals to prevent. The membership of the Internet Watch Foundation also helps ensure that our educational customers adhere to the Federal Government’s “Prevent” Directive guidelines. When the Internet Watch Foundation updates its lists of criminal sites,
Sophos adds these to the URL database and then pushes updates immediately to UTMs operating in the field. This means there needs to be a time frame for students to be exposed to extremist content while waiting for an update that blocks an illegal website. Competing products relying on third-party suppliers to provide and maintain their antivirus and URL Database cannot provide immediate updates. Schools using these solutions may expose their students to illegal content during the time between when the update is published and is applied.
Sophos UTM has an integrated CTIRU (Counter Terrorism Information Reference Unit) filter. The criminal Activity category, which is one of 96 web categories accessible inside the Sophos UTM Web Filter, also includes data that are provided through CTIRU.
CTIRU (Counter Terrorism Information Reference Unit). These include essays or speeches which call for racial or religious violence and videos of violence that have messages of “glorification” or praise for attackers, chat forums that contain posts that call for individuals to commit terrorist acts and violent extremism or statements designed to incite hatred of any religion or ethnic group, and instructions for making bombs. We also have “Violence,” “Discrimination,” and “Extreme” categories to eliminate sites of radicalization to protect students from extremist and terrorist material.
Sophos UTM features granular on-box Reporting. Sophos UTM reports are simple to comprehend and create. We provide detailed Internet Activity reports which help you to know Who/What/When,/Where the activity took place. Sophos UTM reports include search engine queries and forensic reports about individual user activities, allowing you to analyze users’ behavior and take action. Reports are produced on Sophos UTM with no extra purchase needed. Administrators can also monitor traffic in real time and decide to restrict or alter the traffic. Further reporting options include:
- Save immediately email subscribers for any report(s) and keep the staff members, and the leadership staff informed.
- Archiving log files On-box, FTP SMB Email, SSH, and Syslog.
- Daily activity report
- Report to override
Sophos UTM provides full integration with YouTube for schools. Sophos UTM is optimized for integration with YouTube for Schools, which allows schools to restrict YouTube access to educational content and any videos approved explicitly by an administrator (more information about the program and how you can use it can be found at youtube.com).
Sophos Application Control Social Media has been a primary tool used by criminals to aid in student radicalization. Sophos UTM lets you restrict the use of apps like Facebook, Bit torrent, and Skype. Applications can be disabled or restricted access via your profile. For instance, this allows you to create different rules for lower and upper-school students. It also allows you to implement the safe-search capabilities available on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Sophos UTM comes with Web integrated into EndpointWith Sophos, you have total protection from the internet wherever your students go, whether in classes, at home, or even on the bus to school. In the case of Sophos endpoint customers, Our Sophos UTM integrates seamlessly with Sophos Secured Windows Endpoints to offer complete protection to web users and offline users. If they leave the local network, Sophos UTM Sophos Endpoint takes over, giving them complete security and enforcement wherever they move. Policies updates and browsing activity are automatically synchronized. Students and staff are safe from the threat of radicalization even when working remotely.
Furthermore, your I.T. department can depend on something other than the backhauling internet traffic to UTM, which could cause the internet connection to slow down. What’s even better when an organization is licensed with a Sophos endpoint license is a free for-home use license that can be given to all employees and students. What do you do now?
You’ve discovered that Sophos is the only company leader in security in U.K. Education. We offer SophosLabs the solution provider partner and products to assist schools like yours in meeting the Prevent directives and protecting your staff and students against radicalization and other threats. Why not talk to our sales and technical experts from the SophosLabs partner network or Sophos U.K.
