University of Nottingham

Finjan Vital Security Web Appliance prevents malicious content from entering University’s network

The University of Nottingham has deployed real-time Web security with enhanced browsing confidence to secure its infrastructure and operations across its various campus locations from external threats. As well as protecting a campus network containing 12,000 University-owned computers used for teaching, research and administration, Nottingham also has a separate network for undergraduates in University accommodation connecting a further 8,000 student-owned PCs to campus resources and the Internet. The University needed to secure these computers and protect the privacy of students’ personal information.

The Internet has become a critical resource for a wide range of teaching and research activity for both staff and students but remains liable to Web-borne attacks. Additionally, as a global academic enterprise with an income of over £380 million, the University needed to secure its critical business systems and protect the online activities of its administrative staff. Protection against malicious code, spyware and increasingly crimeware was a top priority.

The University has multiple gigabit connections to the East Midlands Metropolitan Area network (EMMAN) which in turn connects it to the UK Joint Academic Network (JANET). Following Information Services’ extensive investigation, including a number of other leading gateway products and an on-campus evaluation, it opted for an integrated gateway solution based around Finjan’s large enterprise NG8000 appliance to provide a single point of management for real-time Web content scanning and anti-virus through multiple scanning blades. The Finjan solution has been integrated with the University’s existing Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) load balancer to provide members with resilient Internet access via the multiple scanning blades within the Finjan Blade centre.

“Increases in web-borne attacks mean that traditional signature-based anti-virus software alone is not enough and can’t give us the protection we need against new and evolving malware threats. Students are often heavy users of social networking and other collaborative Web 2.0 enabled sites which require more proactive threat detection and prevention techniques,” said Paul Kennedy, Security & Compliance Group Leader, Information Services for The University of Nottingham. “During the initial deployment we were able to identify a number of threats to the network that had previously been difficult to detect. Active content scanning gives us an additional tool in our armoury for detecting and preventing crimeware attacks against University data and members’ personal information.”

Finjan’s real-time content inspection technology is uniquely capable of analysing Web content in real-time regardless of its source, breaking down the code and understanding its true intent without executing it on the end user’s machine. Finjan delivers the highest rate of malicious code detection and prevention, allowing universities to safeguard their most valuable
asset – their data.

“We are pleased with our deployment at the University of Nottingham,” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CTO of Finjan. “The combination of Finjan’s patented real-time content inspection technology with Anti-Virus capabilities will provide the University’s researchers, teachers, administrators and students with an excellent, layered web security solution,” he concluded.

The University’s Information Services security staff can manage activity via co-hosted policy server blades. These “all-in-one” appliances feature Finjan’s real-time content inspection, Vulnerability Anti.dote and Anti-Spyware engines, as well as McAfee’s fully integrated Anti-Virus engine. It is deployed to provide coverage for the University’s five main campuses in Nottingham and nine satellite sites across the East Midlands. It secures campus data centres, staff desktops, student laptops, shared access computer rooms as well as a wide array of specialist laboratory equipment and one of the most powerful high performance compute grids in the UK.

Lorna Burman, Sales Manager, Lucid IT Services Ltd and who introduced Nottingham to the Finjan solution commented “Providing a solution to Nottingham University presented a number of unique challenges not normally found in the corporate environment. We strongly believe the Finjan solution meets all the requirements and will continue to provide a best-of-breed protection for years to come”.

By integrating several security engines in a single appliance, Finjan’s comprehensive and integrated Web security solution facilitates rapid deployment, simplifies management, and reduces total cost of ownership. In addition, the appliance’s granular policy management lets the University of Nottingham enforce a flexible Web browsing environment by defining specific security policies for different parts of the network.

About The University of Nottingham

With origins dating back to 1881 and a Royal Charter granted in 1948, The University of Nottingham is a leading research university located in the East Midlands region of England. It has more than 36,000 registered students including over 7,500 international students from more than 145 countries. The university ranks in the Top 10 of the best universities in the UK, the Top 25 in Europe, and the Top 70 worldwide according to independent league tables.

In 1999, it opened an overseas campus in Malaysia and recently launched The University of Nottingham Ningbo in China. Alumni include the author DH Lawrence as well as Professor Sir Clive Granger, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science in 2003. The university also has its own Nobel Prize winner – Professor Sir Peter Mansfield who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work in the application of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

About Finjan

Finjan is a global provider of web security solutions for the enterprise market. Their real time, appliance-based web security solutions deliver the most effective shield against web-borne threats, freeing enterprises to harness the web for maximum commercial results. Finjan’s real-time web security solutions utilize patented behavior-based technology to repel all types of threats arriving via the web, such as spyware, phishing, Trojans and obfuscated malicious code, securing businesses against unknown and emerging threats, as well as known malware. Finjan’s security solutions have received industry awards and recognition from leading analyst houses and publications, including IDC, Butler Group, SC Magazine, CRN, ITPro, PCPro, ITWeek, Network Computing, and Information Security. With Finjan’s award-winning and widely used solutions, businesses can focus on implementing web strategies to realize their full organizational and commercial potential.