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Customer Success Stories

“We found ForeScout simple and easy to deploy.”

Anthony Maciel
Director of Technology
Support Services
Golden West College

Golden West College Secures Campus Network with ForeScout CounterACT

Challenge:

Golden West College is known for its academic innovation and online learning systems. They have a large Cisco-switched campus network that supports 14000 students, with hundreds of open network ports sprinkled across the campus.
Challenge 1: ensure that student laptops can’t spread infection to computers owned by the university.
Challenge 2: ensure that staff computers (especially the laptops, which often leave the network for extended periods of time) remain compliant with security policies.
Challenge 3: prove that the campus network is PCI compliant. The college has several credit card payment centers – bookstore, theater, and cafeteria.

Solution:

Anthony Maciel, Director of Technology Support Services at GWC, evaluated network access control products from all the major players, including those from his network and desktop security vendors. He found that most of these products had a lot of moving parts that would be costly and difficult to deploy. Then he looked at ForeScout... “And that was it!” says Maciel. “ForeScout’s product installed in less than a day, and instantly started working for us. We have had zero downtime due to service breaches! And I’ve got a great solution for PCI compliance.”
One ForeScout CounterACT appliance was installed on Golden West College’s network in an out-of-band configuration.
The moment any device connects to the network, the ForeScout CounterACT appliance detects what type of device it is and who the owner is. It then assigns the device to the appropriate VLAN.

Results:

Guest Access Management.

“Ensuring that the entire network remained secure was a challenge: we had all types of student laptops ... logging in from hundreds of locations. But ForeScout solved my problem. Now, I can give students instant access to the network, without incurring any risk that the student laptops can spread infection to systems owned by the college.”

Policy Enforcement.

“Every time a staff member plugs his computer into our network, the ForeScout network appliance immediately checks to see whether it meets minimum security standards. If not, ForeScout automatically puts the computer into a remediation VLAN where the user can update his software.”

PCI Compliance.

“We have several pay centers on campus where we process student credit card transactions, and I had to prove that my network was compliant with the PCI regulations. I could have tried to produce compliance and audit reports manually, but that would have been painful and time-consuming. ForeScout CounterACT took away the pain. Using the product’s simple PCI compliance policy template and built-in report, I have been able to reduce weeks of audit preparation down to days.”

Visibility.

“We used to have a major problem with rogue devices. Students would bring their wireless network devices and plug them into the campus network, creating big problems for PCI compliance. ForeScout CounterACT allows me to find the rogue devices and shut them down.”

Easy to Deploy.

“ForeScout NAC was simple and easy to deploy. There are no moving parts. Everything I needed was contained in a simple appliance. No software to install. Nothing to change or reconfigure in our network. An hour after dropping a ForeScout appliance on our network – BAM! I could see everything that was going on. ForeScout is a great product that is easy to manage.”