Coleg Gwent boosts virtualized estate with better cybersecurity

• Cybersecurity & Privacy - Endpoint Security
• Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security

• Education

• Business Operation
• Facility Management

• Cybersecurity Services
• System Integration

When Coleg Gwent, the largest higher education institution in Usk, Wales, was virtualizing thousands of desktops and servers, a problem emerged. The college’s security solution was consuming significant compute resources and causing virtualized endpoints to run slowly or even lock up. Also concerning were weekly outages resulting from infected endpoints, requiring IT to travel to classrooms and offices across multiple sites to clean and reimage machines. To address these issues, Coleg Gwent evaluated alternative security solutions and selected GravityZone Business Security from Bitdefender.

Founded in 1910, Coleg Gwent is the largest higher education institution in Usk, Wales. With 24,000 students and six locations across South Wales, Coleg Gwent is a significant educational establishment in the region. The institution employs 1,300 staff members who are dedicated to providing quality education and support to their students. Coleg Gwent offers a wide range of courses and programs, catering to various academic and vocational interests. The institution is committed to leveraging technology to enhance the learning experience and ensure the safety and security of its digital infrastructure.

Today, Coleg Gwent uses GravityZone Business Security to safeguard 4,800 physical and virtualized servers and desktops running in classrooms and offices in six campus facilities, as well as from remote locations. Bitdefender GravityZone Business Security incorporates proven machine learning techniques, behavioral analysis, and continuous monitoring of running processes to protect against ransomware, phishing, zero-day attacks, and other malware. Coleg Gwent’s server and desktop environments protected by GravityZone include Citrix XenDesktop, macOS, Linux, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Windows, Nutanix, VMware ESXi, and VMware vSphere. Coleg Gwent’s applications, such as Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office 365, and Microsoft SQL Server, run on endpoints in the GravityZone environment. In addition, Coleg Gwent uses GravityZone Security for Virtual Env per CPU to minimize impact on cloud computing resources and automate security management across its Citrix, Nutanix, and VMware environments.

• In the two years preceding Coleg Gwent’s installation of GravityZone, there were eight ransomware attacks, as well as weekly infections that would disable a small number of endpoints.
• GravityZone also has changed the nature of security administration work at Coleg Gwent, explains Gower-Fox. “Since we have decreased time spent rebuilding and reimaging infected endpoints, I now am more available to investigate potential phishes and other threats. Bitdefender has been such a leap forward because we now have a trustworthy layer in our security onion.”
• The previous endpoint performance issues have disappeared, reports Gower-Fox: “We used to get calls from users who reported their desktops would lock up when security scanning was in progress. It got even worse when we virtualized because multiple virtual machines were competing for resources on the same virtual host. GravityZone took the load off the virtual machines with its small footprint. In fact, I’m not aware of anyone’s endpoint locking up due to GravityZone.”

• Eight ransomware attacks in two years dropped to zero in six years
• Decreased time spent on cleaning and rebuilding infected endpoints
• Streamlined scalability and installation facilitates work-from-home transition