Armidale Catholic Schools Office (CSO) employs three full time IT staff who has the responsibility of managing the information technology systems in their catholic schools throughout North Western New South Wales. The CSO has commenced upgrading their security to Endian Unified Threat Management (UTM) devices in order to enhance reliability, reduce staff downtime and streamline systems across a Wide Area Network of 24 sites each with separate routers.

The Armidale CSO provides educational, administrative, ICT, industrial, financial and employment services and support for the 24 Catholic primary and secondary schools spread across the second largest diocese by area in New South Wales. Within their boundaries are the major centres of Armidale, Tamworth, Gunnedah, Moree, Narrabri and Inverell and 15 other towns ranging from Tenterfield in the north, Quirindi in the south and Walgett in the west.

Although the previously used Linux routers (built in-house) were affordable, they were fundamentally flawed for this extensive remote office environment. Over the years and many reactions to security needs the Armidale CSO found themselves in a situation whereby there were many different ‘set ups’ and configurations throughout the 24 schools and due to the lack of reliability the IT staff were faced with continual downtime attending to the schools to repair and replace.

According to Armidale CSO ICT Officer Michael Sampson it had become extremely difficult to manage the security amongst all schools with so many different and unreliable configurations.

“It got to a point where it was an absolute headache to manage the systems from our central office and in some instances a staff member would be away from our office for three days to attend to one repair or replacement. We just can’t afford three days of downtime on a continual basis” said Mr Sampson.

Armidale CSO needed to enhance and streamline the security systems throughout their network of schools and consequently prevent the amount of unnecessary downtime for staff. They also needed to minimise the potential legal and ethical risks that exposure to inappropriate content could create. Further, the CSO had to have a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that allowed them to securely maintain all devices in the schools without leaving the central office. Equally important was that it was a standard off the shelf package that was well thought out and put together nicely.

Mr Sampson was serious about finding a suitable solution and took the time to trial and test the Endian.

“We trialled the free community version of the Endian for a couple of months, which proved an easy and effective way to find out if it works in our environment. From this successful trial we purchased one Endian Firewall Mini to trial and now have 8 Endian Firewall Minis, with the long term plan of having the Endian Firewall Minis in all schools” commented Mr Sampson.

Due to reliability, the quality of web filtering and the ability to easily deploy Virtual Private Networks (VPN) Armidale CSO chose the Endian Minis to install in each of their schools and create a uniformed network.

According to Veritech Corporation CEO Livio Mazzon the Endian Firewall Minis were the ideal solution for Armidale CSO’s network of remote offices.

“Each of the sites managed by Armidale CSO has a direct connection to the internet, which means each one requires a router with content filtering. The Endian Firewall Mini is the ideal (UTM) solution for remote offices and will allow Armidale CSO to maximise their network security and reduce unnecessary staff downtime at an affordable price” noted Mr Mazzon.

Armidale CSO is pleased with their new Endian Firewall Minis and believes that the reliability and simplicity to use are the key benefits for their network.

“The Endian is so much more reliable and user friendly than our previous systems, and is saving us many hours of staff downtime. It is simple to administer and was no hassle to install” stated Mr Sampson.

“We are now confident with our web filtering and the VPN is allowing our IT staff to effectively maintain the remote sites without leaving the office. These are two of the features of the Endian that we could not operate without” he said.

Furthermore Mr Sampson noted “The only con to the Endian was that it proved more expensive than our previous system, however when you consider the amount of downtime we have saved we are way ahead with the Endian. Some of the devices are now one year old and they have not missed a beat. I consider this upgrade money well spent!”

For details on Armidale catholic Schools Office visit www.arm.catholic.edu.au

For details on the Endian range visit www.endian.com.au

For details on Veritech Corporation visit www.veritechcorp.com.au