Deployment Timeline
The client first contacted SecureW2 in early October, and scheduled a demo within a day. After being impressed with the intuitive management system, among other components of the JoinNow platform, the client decided to move forward with SecureW2.
Implementation was done that same week and was completed in a single phone call with our PKI experts.
Challenges
The client is a small boarding school in England that is home to just over 500 students. The school first got in contact with SecureW2 looking for a way to monitor the traffic on the school’s network. Students were often accessing inappropriate material and looking up answers to tests and homework while on school grounds.
The school was also interested in going passwordless, as their IT department was often backed up due to password-related issues.
Lastly, they were concerned about the amount of network bandwidth that was taken by students’ BYOD devices. Often, students would be browsing non-school-related things on their cellphones while on campus. This not only distracts students but also takes away from the learning experience as a whole.
Luckily, Zoé and her team found SecureW2 and were blown away by how easy these problems were to solve.
Solution
There’s a simple solution to all of Zoé’s problems: Certificates.
Certificates remove the onus from the end-use by removing the need for usernames and passwords. They also allow IT admins to easily put a name to every network connection because they can contain a host of identifying information, such as:
- MAC Address
- username
- any other attribute that is contained in your Identity Provider.
Zoé just needed to find a solution that worked for her.
Zo é knew she needed a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in order to implement a certificate-based solution. Fortunately, SecureW2 provides a turnkey platform that includes a Cloud PKI, SCEP certificate delivery for managed devices, and a Cloud RADIUS server built for authenticating certificates.
Many K-12 schools use a PKI solution like us because they can issue Wi-Fi & SSL Inspection certificates to students simultaneously, significantly increasing their visibility into what traffic students are browsing.
The school was also able to restrict access to inappropriate sites and limit bandwidth to students’ BYOD phones. They also were impressed by the role-based access controls that allowed them to segment users (students vs. staff) to allow different levels of access.
Evaluating Success
Zoé and her team have been ecstatic about their new certificate-based network,
They no longer have to worry about time-consuming password resets, costly password leaks, or students accessing inappropriate websites.