Case Study: Bishop Fox's School

Securing Staff & Students' Data

For IT leaders in education, safeguarding student data is a number one priority. Schools keep complete records with personal information on all of their pupils, including names, addresses, family contact details, and medical notes to name a few. Protecting this data is just one of the many daily duties carried out by Neil, Network Manager at Bishop Fox's School in Taunton, Somerset. There are over eleven-hundred user accounts under Neil's care at the secondary education academy, each carrying the potential to introduce a cyber threat to the school's network.

Fortunately, with Barracuda Networks industry-leading email security and Altinet's managed service support, Bishop Fox's School can be confident that users are protected while Neil shifts focus to other important work.

Comprehensive Security across the Board

The value of confidential student records is no secret to cyber threat actors. They know that stealing sensitive data could be highly-lucrative for ransoming, particularly since schools are legally obligated to protect children's personal information under GDPR rules. Hackers are also attracted to the large attack surface that schools present - with many hundreds of accounts, there are just as many opportunities to compromise the network.

At Bishop Fox's School, Neil faces these tasks in addition to the already complex day-to-day network maintenance, which has only grown more complex with the introduction of remote desktop protocols. Implementing distance learning systems during the pandemic has been a challenge across the education sector, not least due to the sheer number of users at play. Bishop Fox's School, for example, numbers around 1150 endpoints shared between students and faculty. This in turn would stretch IT department resources thin, adding further difficulty and potential vulnerability to cyber-attacks.

Considering these factors together, Bishop Fox's School was looking for a solution that could protect users from cyber fraud and minimise risk to staff and students; a solution that could automatically detect and prevent phishing and malware attacks on school email accounts. The school also required a cloud backup solution for their Microsoft 365 applications, including SharePoint, Teams, Exchange and OneDrive.

Ideally, these new measures would be quick and easy to implement, without causing unnecessary disruption to the school's daily activities - which is exactly why Barracuda was the perfect fit for Bishop Fox's needs. "Today's email security threats are multiplying at an unprecedented rate. The staff and students at the school are vulnerable to numerous phishing, ransomware, and other malware attacks," says Neil. "With the school using Microsoft OneDrive and Teams for data storage, the backup solution was a 'must have' to restore any documents or emails quickly and securely."

Precision Defence: Delivered

Working closely with Altinet, Bishop Fox's picked out two distinct solutions to address his email security concerns: Barracuda Sentinel and Barracuda Cloud to Cloud Backup. With Barracuda Sentinel's AI-powered Advanced Threat Protection, the school now had fully automatic inbox defence - including comprehensive protection against cyber fraud and spear phishing.

"Barracuda Sentinel was implemented and immediately started working." Neil states. "Its real-time defence immediately blocked incoming spam, phishing and malware embedded emails." Neil also praised Sentinel's account takeover and domain fraud prevention features, which contributed an extra layer of protection to staff and student mailboxes.

"Implementation was very quick." said Neil. "Within an hour of meeting with the engineers the school was protected and backing up." Barracuda Cloud to Cloud Backups were also implemented, which Neil praised for its unlimited storage and unlimited data retention. Backup is a vital component of email security to ensure quick remediation in the event of a cyber-attack.

Altogether, these solutions address each of Neil's concerns for Bishop Fox School's email security with highly-effective automated response and remediation - freeing up time for Bishop Fox's IT department to focus on other tasks. Better still, with dedicated support from Barracuda and Altinet's technical team, Bishop Fox's School can be confident that any future concerns or questions will be answered with by experts with a human touch.

"Altinet customer service and technical support has been brilliant. I was kept up to date with the whole process and Teams meetings when needed to implement the system," Neil explains. "Once all solutions were in place, Altinet provided catch-up meetings to make sure I was happy and the Barracuda system was doing as it should."

Barracuda Sentinel and Cloud to Cloud Backup will work alongside the current SEG technology within the Microsoft 365 email environment, providing an invaluable layer of security to Bishop Fox's cyber security. Neil's worries about emerging cyber threats such as spam, phishing, malware and account takeover will be managed by Barracuda's automated response and remediation. Plus, if the worst does happen, Bishop Fox's can be safe in the knowledge that all essential and private information is secure with Barracuda's Cloud to Cloud Backups.

About Barracuda Sentinel

Sentinel detects threats that traditional email security systems can’t, integrating directly with Microsoft Office 365 APIs to detect attacks coming from both internal and external sources. Using artificial intelligence, Sentinel can detect signs of malicious intent and deception within every email with virtually no IT administration required.

• Real-time defence against Business Email Compromise
  Sentinel’s unique API-based architecture lets its AI engine study historical email and learn users’ unique communication patterns. It can then identify anomalies in message metadata and content, to find and block socially engineered attacks in real time.
  
  
• Protection against Account Takeover and insider risk
  Sentinel stops phishing attacks used to harvest credentials for account takeover. It detects anomalous email behaviour and alerts IT, then finds and removes all fraud emails sent from compromised accounts.
  
  
• Brand protection and Domain Fraud visibility
  Sentinel helps prevent email domain fraud with DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance) reporting and analysis. Granular visibility and analysis of DMARC reports helps you minimize false positives, protect legitimate email, and prevent spoofing.
  
  

About Barracuda Cloud to Cloud Backup

Barracuda’s Cloud-to-Cloud Backup Service backs up all of your Office 365 data to secure Barracuda Cloud Storage with no need for on-premises infrastructure, with both on-demand and automated scheduling options. 

Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business data is all deduplicated and compressed for maximum storage efficiency and reduced backup windows before being stored in the Barracuda Cloud.

The data backed up to the Barracuda Cloud is accessible, searchable, and retrievable from anywhere with an Internet connection. Messages, folders, or even entire mailboxes and be restored back to the original user and location, to a different location within the account, or to a completely different user account. You can also download items for offline use.