Kewanee High School, or KHS, is a public four-year high school located at 1211 E. Third Street in Kewanee, Illinois, a city in Kewanee Township of Henry County, Illinois, in the Midwestern United States. KHS is part of Kewanee Community Unit School District 229, which also includes Central Junior High School, Central Elementary School, Irving Elementary School, Belle Elementary School, and Lyle Preschool.
The Challenge
Kewanee Community School District #229 was having bandwith issues and they couldn't pinpoint the source of the problem. "We were unable to track down the source of the issues using our old firewall," said Mike Perva, IT Director for Kewanee Community School District #229.
The open source project that created the firewall had stopped working on their product shortly after the school district had rolled it out. Perva continued: "The product hadn't received an update in the entire five years since we implemented it, plus it was doing very little to protect our network or provide us with answers which we were looking for."
The Requirements
Perva preferred to use an open source product but also needed the solution to be user friendly. He was also looking for a standalone appliance that could fulfill all of the school district's security needs and continue to grow with them as their needs changed.
The Solution
After evaluating a SonicWall and several open source products, Perva discovered the Astaro Security Gateway while browsing the Internet for firewall solutions. He downloaded a trial of the Astaro Security Gateway and was pleased by what he saw. "Almost immediately, I was impressed by the Astaro Security Gateway's functionality and what it did for our network in such a short amount of time," said Perva.
Perva deployed six units ranging from the Astaro Security Gateway 320 to 120 models to protect the 1,800 students and 120 staff members. Each appliance has a different configuration and protects a different area of the network.
Success with Astaro
Since deploying the Astaro Security Gateway, Perva is much more aware of what is coming and going on in his network. Perva explained, "I get daily emails from the units as well as graphs and reports that help us react quickly to issues that may rise," Perva states that the most significant benefit of having the Astaro Security Gateway on his network is the time he now saves. "I don't have to waste time diagnosing problems on our network like I used to and I always know how the network is behaving."
