Find out how De La Salle College is keeping their students and staff safe online.

1. CASE STUDY: HEADER TITLE...
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CASE STUDY
De La Salle College
“Fortinet’s scalability and
additional capabilities
mean that we can not
only meet today’s re-
quirements but support
future initiatives as well.”
– Luke Georgiou, Digital Learning
Services Manager at
De La Salle College
Melbourne’s De La Salle College has fully embraced the digital world and is
reaping the benefits of eLearning. With access to AARNet’s gigabit network
and infrastructure secured by Fortinet, De La Salle’s students and teachers
now have reliable, high-speed access to an increasingly sophisticated suite
of teaching tools to support and enhance the classroom experience.
Legacy access
Until last year, De La Salle College was making due with a shared 20MB link that had reliability issues and
slowed to a crawl during peak traffic hours. There was no system in place to monitor individual users and
security was managed off-site. What had been a workable solution was nearing the end of it’s ‘use by’
date. De La Salle’s administration knew they had to make a change.
“When I came on board in July 2015,” says Luke Georgiou, Digital Learning Services Manager at De La
Salle College, “I had my work cut out for me. The infrastructure was getting old and the demands on the
system were swamping capacity. But I had the support from management to put us back on track and
move us into the digital fast lane.”
Twin requirements: capacity and security
Georgiou is an experienced IT administrator and quickly sized up the situation. “We had two major
challenges,” explains Georgiou, “First was to upgrade our internet access. With more than 1150 Year
4-12 students we needed a high-bandwidth pipe to support classroom and non-classroom on-line
activities. Second was to centralise our control over that access. We wanted to secure our network
against outside threats such as malware, viruses and malicious activity whilst ensuring that we could
provide a safe and reliable online experience for students, teachers and staff.”
Details
Customer Name: De La Salle College
Industry: Education
Location: Melbourne
Challenges
n Legacy infrastructure and internet link
nearing end of ‘use-by’ date
n Students, teachers and staff’s digital
requirements skyrocketing
n Clear mandate from administration to
find a solution
Benefits
n Fast and secure access to
on-line resources
n Cost-effective and trouble-free
operational management
n Real-time security services and
expert local support
Deployment
n FortiGate 1500D Next
Generation Firewall
n FortiAnalyzer - Network Security
Logging, Analysis and Reporting
Appliance
n FortiGuard Security
Subscription Services
AARNet and Fortinet move
Melbourne’s De La Salle College
into the fast (and secure) lane

2. CASE STUDY: De La Salle College
The internet access component was solved with AARNet (Australia’s
Academic and Research Network). This high-speed fibre-optic
network provides unique information communications technology
capabilities to enable Australian education and research institutions to
collaborate with each other and their international peer communities.
Faster access requires industrial-strength security
“We found that we could tap into AARNet relatively easily and at a
cost we could afford,” says Georgiou, “so that issue was taken care
of. But this fast access and virtually unlimited bandwidth meant that
we needed industrial-strength protection and the ability to manage
users at the granular level.”
Again, Georgiou’s experience paid off. “I had used Fortinet
infrastructure at my pervious role at another school,” he says, “and
was well-acquainted with Fortinet’s combination of fast throughput,
high security and centralised management. That gave us a starting
point. But we wanted to see if there were any better solutions on the
market that could give us the same capabilities at a more affordable
price point.”
“We knew that we would be in a competitive situation when we first
engaged with De La Salle College,” says Ebony Williams, Regional
Account Manager at Fortinet. “Working with a local Fortinet Partner,
we conducted a thorough audit of their then-current infrastructure and
anticipated configurations and traffic volumes. Luke had developed
a detailed functional requirements analysis that outlined exactly what
he wanted and the timeframes that they desired. We responded
with a specification for a powerful mid-range FortiGate 1500D Next
Generation Firewall, a virtualised version of FortiAnalyzer and real time
advanced protection from the FortiGuard Lab’s Security Subscription
Service.”
Strong competition
“We received a number of responses to our request for expressions
of interest,” continues Georgiou. “Most were not what we wanted
but two in particular, Fortinet and a competitor, stood out as clear
favourites. So we opted for a benchmark / proof of concept that
would give us the metrics we would need to make the best decision.”
“We look forward to live performances,” says Williams. “We installed
combination physical/virtual demo units at De La Salle and managed
them, both on-site and remotely, for a couple of weeks. We worked
closely with Luke to show him how to get the most out of the FortiOS
secure operating system, set up rules and enforce policies.”
“At the conclusion of the benchmark testing,” says Georgiou,
“Fortinet performed better in almost every category. Fortinet’s
integrated security features meant that we could manage the
system without too much difficulty. And the local team from
Fortinet was extremely pro-active and made it clear that we
would receive top-notch support in the future.”
Lowest TCO
Cost/performance was another key consideration. “The
competitor was aggressive in their pricing,” notes Georgiou, “But
in spite of this, Fortinet’s offer still gave us the lowest total cost
of ownership. And when combined with their comprehensive
approach to security, leading technology and local support,
the decision to implement Fortinet’s Next Generation Firewall
framework was easy.” Installation took place over summer
school holidays for minimal disruption.
The experience has been a positive one. “Everything is going
according to plan,” says Georgiou. “We now have a fast, robust
link to the world via AARNet and a secure multi-functional
gateway that gives us complete visibility across the network
and at devices and users to the granular level. Plus the Fortinet
support team has been helpful as we learned the system. They
work hard to resolve our calls and escalate if the issue is more
complex.”
“Now that we have the basics under control we can move
forward,” concludes Georgiou. “We have plans to offer more
digital services to students, staff and guests so that they
can tap into more on-line resources. Fortinet’s scalability and
additional capabilities mean that we can not only meet today’s
requirements but support future initiatives as well.”
“Fortinet’s integrated security features meant that
we could manage the system without too much
difficulty. And the local team from Fortinet was
extremely pro-active and made it clear that we
would receive top-notch support in the future.”
Luke Georgiou, Digital Learning Services
Manager at De La Salle College
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