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Solution
Overview
Customer
Profile
Thomas College, a small private
college in Maine, has more than 1,100
undergraduate, graduate, and continuing
education students and offers degrees in
business, technology, education, political
science, and psychology.
Business
Situation
As the scope and nature of its
Internet use expanded, Thomas College needed
additional security features, such as
application-layer inspection and advanced
logging and reporting
capabilities.
Solution
Description
Thomas College deployed
Microsoft® Internet and Acceleration Server
(ISA) 2004 as a perimeter firewall, Web proxy,
Web cache, and Web filter, as well as for secure
Web server
publishing.
Benefits
- More in-depth inspection of Web traffic
- Increased performance
- Comprehensive logging
- Built-in log querying
- Customized reporting
Software
and Services
Vertical
Industries
Colleges
Country/Region
United
States
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Thomas College is a small, private,
career-oriented college with an enrollment of more than
1,100 undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education
students. In 1997, Thomas was one of the first colleges
in the United States to deploy a Web-based information
systems infrastructure. A few years later, the College
deployed Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration
(ISA) Server 2000 to safeguard its systems from outside
threats. Based on its success with ISA Server 2000, the
College recently upgraded to ISA Server 2004 to add
application-layer filtering, high-performance Web
caching, and advanced logging and reporting features. As
a result, Thomas is able to provide added protection for
its Web-based applications, provide students and
employees with high performance and secure Internet
access, and more effectively identify and address
potential threats.
Situation
Located on 70 acres overlooking
the Kennebec River in Waterville, Maine, Thomas College
is a small, private, career-oriented college with total
enrollment of more than 1,100 undergraduate, graduate,
and continuing education students. Thomas was one of the
first colleges in the United States to build a Web-based
information systems infrastructure to enable students,
faculty, and administrators to access and run more than
900 of the College's core business and academic
applications through a Web browser.
To enhance accessibility while safeguarding those
systems from external attacks, the College implemented
Microsoft® Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA)
Server 2000. The College chose ISA Server for its:
- Tight integration with Microsoft Windows®-based
client workstations.
- Support for other operating systems.
- Favorable price/performance ratio.
- Support for fast Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP) proxy, which constitutes the majority of the
College's traffic.
Because Thomas maintains a health center and also
manages financial aid transactions, it has to meet a
growing number of healthcare, financial, and academic
regulations. In 2004, the College decided to update its
firewall protection to gain additional capabilities,
such as application-layer inspection, secure Web server
publishing, and advanced logging and reporting
capabilities.
"We are audited annually in each regulatory area, so
it is important that we safeguard the security of our
systems and can easily produce reports documenting
security," says Christopher Rhoda, Vice President for IT
Services, Thomas College.
Solution
The College decided to upgrade to ISA Server 2004,
running on the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating
system—the foundation of Microsoft Windows Server
System™ integrated server software. By upgrading to ISA
Server 2004, the College gained:
- The ability to view all traffic in and out of its
network
- A new easier-to-use management interface
- Application-layer filtering
"With application-layer filtering we can look inside
Internet traffic and see exactly what the application
is, rather than just whether there's traffic on it or
not," says Rhoda.
Thomas is using ISA Server 2004 as a perimeter
firewall, Web proxy, Web cache, and Web filter, as well
as for secure Web server publishing. The system
safeguards its internal administrative systems, and
controls access to its extranet. On the extranet
students and alumni can view private data, such as their
own address and phone records and their own grades.
Faculty can also view class information, such as the
list of students enrolled in their classes.
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We really push ISA Server
2004, and it performs great for us, I can't
imagine our network without it. |
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Christopher
Rhoda
Vice President for IT Services, Thomas
College |
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| Benefits
By upgrading to ISA Server 2004, the College gained
deeper firewall safeguards, higher performance, built-in
log querying, and customized reporting capabilities.
More In-depth Inspection of Web
Traffic
Complete stateful inspection of Web
traffic and the application-layer filtering feature in
ISA Server 2004 help to provide Thomas with
increased security against external attacks. The
new unified rule structure makes it easier to identify
potential threats so that administrators can take action
to avoid them. "The more areas ISA Server can inspect
and identify, the more things we can build rules
against," says Rhoda.
Increased Performance for Internal and External
Users
The high-performance Web caching in ISA
Server 2004 accelerates Web performance for those
accessing the Internet from campus and for external
users. "ISA Server 2004 supports both forward caching
for outgoing requests to the Internet, and reverse
caching for incoming requests to our Web servers," says
Rhoda.
Built-in Log Querying and Customized
Reporting
"The logging feature in ISA Server
2004 is one of the primary reasons we selected it,"
Rhoda says. "The ISA Server log identifies every piece
of traffic that comes in or goes out of our campus. If
we get a notice that someone on our network has
illegally used a copyrighted software package, we can
query the log based on any field recorded, verify the
event, identify the user, and apply the appropriate
sanctions."
ISA Server 2004 reports are customizable, so the
College can add more information and meet different
needs for each entity to which it reports.
"We really push ISA Server 2004, and it performs
great for us," says Rhoda. "I can't imagine our network
without it."
Microsoft Windows Server
System
Microsoft Windows Server System integrated
server infrastructure software is designed to support
end-to-end solutions built on Windows Server 2003. It
creates an infrastructure based on integrated
innovation, Microsoft's holistic approach to building
products and solutions that are intrinsically designed
to work together and interact seamlessly with other data
and applications across your IT environment. This helps
you reduce the costs of ongoing operations, deliver a
more secure and reliable IT infrastructure, and drive
valuable new capabilities for the future growth of your
business.
For more information about Windows Server
System, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and
services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at
(800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada
Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are
deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text
telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the
United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the
50 United States and Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the
World Wide Web, go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/
For more information about Thomas College, call (207)
859-1111 or visit the Web site at:
http://www.thomas.edu/
©
2004 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights reserved.
This case study is for
informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft,
Windows, Windows Server and Windows Server
System are either registered trademarks or
trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States
and/or other countries. The names of actual companies
and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of
their respective owners.
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