[December 06, 2007] Enterasys Networks Helps Secure Bethel University Open Learning Environment Tweet (Wireless News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Enterasys Networks Inc., the Secure Networks company, announced that Bethel University in St. Paul, MN will leverage Enterasys Network Access Control (NAC) to authenticate, assess and authorize over 7,000 students and employees, and more than 4,000 networked devices. Locations in St. Paul, MN; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; San Diego, CA; and Washington, DC are united by a coast-to-coast voice/video/data network offering distance learning and teaching applications, including Blackboard. Through its partnership with Enterasys, the university's IT staff has granular visibility and control over applications using the network without the need to touch desktop or laptop computers. "Prior to deploying Enterasys, it was difficult for us to determine where our users or devices connected within our multi-campus network," said Bill Doyle, Vice President of IT services for Bethel University. "Now we can identify users and devices and address problems while leveraging role-based policies that prioritize and secure specific applications and users. Enterasys NAC is a flexible solution that scales to meet our dynamic requirements." In providing a Christian higher education, Bethel University integrates a broad choice of strong academic programs for its 6,300 students enrolled in 100 undergraduate, graduate, and seminary programs. A network operations staff of only three people has leveraged Enterasys role-based policy management to enforce security and bandwidth control at many access ports and will extend this capability to the entire network. The policy-based Approach enables greater user mobility as the same privileges follow the user or device as they move around the network without requiring continuous manual intervention for every move, add or change. "The standards-based, open-architecture Approach Enterasys offers has integrated well with our Cisco devices and other vendors' solutions for WAN optimization and SPAM filtering," said Doug Olson, Network Services Director at Bethel University. "We can adapt the hardware and software to our unique needs by applying our own logic and the thought leadership from our local Enterasys partner CompuNet." The unique culture at Bethel University has resulted in an environment where the students proactively report technology vulnerabilities they find to the university's IT staff. The capable computer science students collaborate to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information on the campus. According to Olson and Doyle, most problems on the student network are accidental, not intentional. The common problem of a student accidentally plugging in backwards a switch or wireless access point from the local electronics store is prevented by Enterasys edge access policies that discard the DHCP server traffic that would otherwise disrupt network services. "Beyond the rich features at a competitive price, Enterasys support is extremely easy to work with as they quickly address any of our issues or questions," continued Olson. "The main reasons we value our partnership with Enterasys are the positive experience with their support team and the responsiveness of their sales people to provide us with assurance and flexibility as our infrastructure adapts to new needs over time." In the near future, Bethel University plans to implement the Enterasys Dragon intrusion detection and prevention system to further protect its network from external threats. The university is looking to improve its ability to communicate instructions in the event of an emergency on campus. A new wireless network infrastructure is also being deployed to support unified control, longer distances and faster speeds for voice/video/data applications. "Enterasys empowers customers through active involvement with their developers and executives," concludes Bill Doyle. "This was clearly evident when we had an opportunity to meet face-to-face with Enterasys CEO, Mike Fabiaschi, who listened to our ideas and articulated how much he cares about helping us be successful. We appreciate how they have helped improve our overall efficiency and effectiveness." ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) ((Distributed on behalf of 10Meters via M2 Communications Ltd - http://www.m2.com)) ((10Meters - http://www.10meters.com)) Copyright 2007 Wireless News [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]