Customer Success Stories
“CounterACT offers a combined NAC and threat prevention solution that helps to protect our network against malware activity or massive outbreaks of computer viruses, either of which could bring our network services to a grinding halt.”
Technion Institute Maintains a Healthy Campus Network with ForeScout CounterACT
Challenge:
- Technion, the premier institute of science and technology in Israel, manages a campus network that typically contains over 2,000 privately-owned student PCs.
- At the beginning of each school term, about half of the “returning” student laptops could have out-of-date anti-virus, anti-spyware and OS software, and some might be infected with malware.
- Network downtime due to virus or malicious activity would impair vital campus functions, and had become a growing concern at Technion.
- They needed a way to automatically validate student login credentials and scan connecting laptops to ensure they complied with campus computing policies before granting access to the campus network.
Solution:
- After evaluating several solutions, Technion Institute IT team, led by Dani Arbel, standardized on ForeScout CounterACT network access control appliance.
- According to Dani Arbel, IT Security Manager at Technion:
“CounterACT has allayed our downtime concerns. It automatically checks connecting laptops to ensure they comply with our campus policies before granting access to our network, and helps remedy found problems without disturbing the user. It also bars access by unauthorized devices such as wireless laptops and rogue routers, which are so often the sources of entry used to tamper with a network. In sum: CounterACT has made network access control a relatively seamless, painless, transparent process for us.”
Results:
- Identified and blocked rogue devices.
“CounterACT quickly detects malicious activity and network address translation (NAT) devices such as rogue routers without having an agent installed on the end system.”
- Policy enforcement.
“We have confidence in our ability to control and readily enforce campus-wide or device-specific policies, and will encounter little or no management overhead when deploying new technology around the solution.”
- Quick installation.
“The institute needed a solution that allowed plug-and-play integration with its existing switch and hardware/software infrastructure. CounterACT is an out-of-band solution that minimized changes to our infrastructure. It is switch-agnostic and uses a mirror scan port to watch the traffic on our switch.”
- Visibility.
“CounterACT can associate every end system with its access port and switch.”