Network Security with UTM

Sunil SharmaUnified Threat Management (UTM) is a comprehensive solution that has gained widespread popularity as a primary network security solution for organisations

By Sunil Sharma, Vice President – India & SAARC, Cyberoam

UTM is the evolution of the traditional firewall into an all-inclusive security product able to perform multiple security functions within one single appliance – network firewalling, network intrusion prevention and gateway antivirus, content filtering, data leak prevention, and on-appliance reporting. Tech-savvy institutions with large networks are well-versed with the security issues that create nuisance on day to day basis. Addressing the security issues, there are many institutions in India and abroad that has installed Cyberoam UTM solution.

Need for network security
While the Internet facilitates speedy communication and easy access to information, it can also be the conduit for a variety of malevolent attacks on the networks of educational institutions through intentional or unintentional access to inappropriate resources. A popular research across the industry suggests that students in educational institutes spend a considerable amount of time in non-productive Internet activities in absence of a strong  comprehensive network security solution.
According to a Cyberoam survey, for an assumed corpus, which includes both revenues and funding, it was found that almost 35 percent of the corpus was lost due to indiscriminate surfing, spam incidences, virus, network intrusion, and downtime. Indiscriminate surfing claimed a major portion at a whopping 14 percent. Others that caused major financial losses included spam at 12 percent, virus at five percent, network intrusion around nine percent and downtime one percent.
This was highly indicative of the surfing pattern of the students and the institute staff.

Cyberoam UTM protection
Cyberoam’s extensive website database and highly granular identity-based policies protect students from accessing inappropriate content by blocking or filtering web access based on work profiles. In educational institutions and libraries where multiple students and faculty access the Internet over shared machines, Cyberoam UTM protection identifies student activity by the user name instantly, enabling institutions to easily monitor online activities, which is not possible with IP-address based solutions.
This way, Cyberoam prevents students, faculty and administration from accessing inappropriate matter online and protects them while they are online. Cyberoam provides continuous monitoring through centralised management to build a pattern of usage and adjust policies accordingly to offer long-term safe internet practices.
Cyberoam’s content filtering carries predefined CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act) templates that include categories like adult content, drugs, violence, computer security and more, allowing institutions to implement Cyberoam CIPA policies immediately on deployment.

Effective monitoring
Cyberoam installations have helped curb the Internet misuse while providing insights into usage patterns of users. The faculty, administration and others constantly share the machine with the students and in many cases indulge in non-productive surfing like – cricket score, bill payment, online banking and shopping. Especially when security solutions stop short of identifying the actual user and traces threat only till IP address, the students are put to blame, which is not the correct picture.
Cyberoam has been installed in reputed educational organisations with long standing credentials in the field. More than 45 percent of educational institutes using network security solutions use Cyberoam. Reputed universities like IIT Gandhinagar, Symbiosis, Delhi University, AIIMS, Mumbai University are some of our esteemed clientele in education segment.

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