Leeds City College in the United Kingdom recently reported that it has successfully deployed WatchGuard Technologies’ (News - Alert) multi-site security platform, providing safe network access for all of its 40,000 students.

Leeds City College was formed in 2009 following the merger of Leeds College of Technology, Leeds Thomas Danby College and Park Lane College Leeds & Keighley. Latter on, two more institutions – Joseph Priestley College and Leeds College of Music – joined the coalition to form what is known today as Leeds City College. Presently the UK's third-largest higher educational establishment, Leeds City College has more than 40,000 students and more than 1,500 staff.

For the student community, the merger and expansion represented exciting new and opportunities, but for the people in charge of the institution’s IT infrastructure, the merger marked the beginning of several new challenges. The greatest of these was how to secure three major points of connection to JANET, the UK's research and education network. The IT team turned to WatchGuard Technologies Unified Threat Management (UTM) platform.

The institution decided to standardize on WatchGuard's integrated, multi-function security platform, connecting three large campuses with fiber circuits and microwave point-to-point links. IT integration firm Epic Net also helped in the implementation process.

The WatchGuard platform was deployed in a phased manner. First, the WatchGuard XTM 1520 appliance was deployed at the Technology Campus. It replaced an existing firewall at the Technology Campus and delivered greater performance and control. Next, a second appliance was installed at the brand new Printworks Campus. Finally, the college installed the WatchGuard XTM 1520 in the Park Lane Campus, thus completing the secure, multi-site network designed to provide full Layer 7 firewall protection and intrusion prevention.

Thanks to the deployment, staff and students are now able to securely access the college network no matter what their preferred mobile device platform is. The system also provides support for the full Microsoft Office suite of applications, so that every student can use an Office 365 email account and associated online collaborative workspace. Moreover, the IT team is now able to centrally manage the platform to facilitate tracking, monitoring and reviewing of real-time access and reporting.

“The expansion of the College posed significant security challenges but the WatchGuard solution has allowed us to efficiently and comprehensively implement network security for staff and students wherever they are on the network. The WatchGuard XTMs are both affordable and uncomplicated to deploy and maintain, helping us ensure we meet compliance standards and can easily scale to accommodate future growth,” said Dave Newsham, ITSS service delivery manager at Leeds City College, in a statement.