Ken ZachresonNetwork AdministratorArizonahttp://www.kusd.org/
Located in the northwest corner of Arizona, Kingman Unified School District #20 is a public school district for pre-school to twelfth grade comprising eleven school sites with a total enrolment of 7,400 students. Its mission is to provide students with an educational foundation for lifelong success. Due to the district's rural location, the Internet is a very valuable and important resource for students, teachers and district office staff alike, all of whom require different levels of access.
Kingman USD has 8000 users on 2250 Windows and Mac PCs. Authentication is Microsoft Active Directory and the district operates a 24Mbit Metro Ethernet with Gbit WAN site-site. Guardian is running on HP Proliant DL360 G5 hardware.
Kingman's existing solution (Symantec Web Security) already provided dynamic filtering but as a previous generation product, was no longer supported by Symantec. Having previously used Websense's URL-based filter, Network Administrator Ken Zachreson was in no doubt that KUSD needed to replace Symantec with an equally dynamic or 'intelligent' (as opposed to URL based) filtering solution. He also needed a competitively priced solution that offered both flexibility and manageability so that different levels of access could be provided for different user groups (such as students, teachers and district office staff).
Ken evaluated Guardian and discovered that it's unique Dynamic Content Analysis technology provided the thorough level of filtering required. Integration with Microsoft Active Directory was straightforward, and he was able to add additional groups, filters and policies - and adjust them to suit different users needs and their environment.
Since implementation, they have found Guardian's user portal (which provides limited access for individual school site managers so they can monitor and self-regulate their own Internet use) to be a particularly valuable feature, and says Guardian is a powerful, robust and manageable addition to the district's security provision.
Because of the rate of change and expansion of the Internet, relying on only URL based filtering permitted too many bad sites and increased the complication of managing access to the good sites
On the cool scale, Guardian ranks somewhere between sliced bread and opposable thumbs!
A significant benefit over our previous solution was eliminating the need to log into the filter to track user activity and apply differing policies.
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