Palo Alto Networks today announced that Sinclair Community College, one of the largest community college campuses in the U.S., has selected the PA-4000 Series next-generation firewall to implement, enforce and monitor application usage control policies. Sinclair Community College has more than 1,000 faculty members and offers accessible, high-quality learning opportunities to the 24,000 students enrolled.
Student populations are well known for aggressively adopting new technology and applications for both research and personal use. Streaming audio and video, instant messaging and peer-to-peer file sharing are just a few of the types of applications that are known to consume bandwidth, introduce threats and invite compliance and legal issues. Unfortunately, most students are either unaware of, or choose to ignore the risks that these applications represent. With a large number of people utilizing the school’s infrastructure, Sinclair must balance the use of such applications with the appropriate security and control. An enforced, meaningful application usage policy was a necessity.
"Our existing infrastructure couldn’t tell us which applications were running on our network," said Scott McCollum, IT Services Director for Sinclair Community College. "After deploying Palo Alto Networks’ PA-4000 Series, we were able to not only see which applications were on our network, but we were also able to understand the benefits and risks associated with them, allowing the enforcement of specific policies appropriate to our needs. The result is a more secure network, focused on our mission to provide the highest quality in learning for our students."
"To ensure infrastructure is available for academic pursuits, colleges and universities must balance between open networks and appropriate levels of control," said Steve Mullaney, Vice President of Marketing for Palo Alto Networks. "The PA-4000 Series enables educational organizations to identify applications traversing the network and make more informed policy decisions on how to treat them."
About Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks™ enables visibility and policy control of applications running on enterprise networks. Based on innovative App-ID™ application classification technology, the Palo Alto Networks PA-4000 Series next-generation firewall accurately identifies applications – regardless of port, protocol, evasive tactic or even SSL encryption – at 10Gbps with no performance degradation. Enterprises can now set and enforce application usage policies to meet compliance requirements, improve threat mitigation and lower operational costs. The Palo Alto Networks team includes security and networking industry veterans from Check Point, NetScreen, McAfee, Cisco, Juniper and Blue Coat. It is backed by investors Globespan Capital Partners, Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital. For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.
###
Palo Alto Networks, the Palo Alto Networks Logo, App-ID, FlashMatch and PAN-OS are trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States. All other trademarks, trade names or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.
