Corpus Christi College, part of the University of Cambridge, is one of the oldest university colleges. During the summer, it has a high number of international students and throughout the year, they have many visitors and host numerous conferences. With the ever-increasing use of IT within education, along with a wide range of users demanding internet access, the importance of a secure and safe network has never been more imperative.

The Challenges

Part of the role of the IT department is to keep the college’s IT secure, while facilitating the requirements of the students and staff. In addition, they deal with the ICT infrastructure of the college including admissions, conferences and the back office environment.  Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is part of everyday life in higher education and
Johnathan Coe, Senior Systems Engineer at the college commented “We allow students to bring any devices they require into the college as it’s their home… and we allow them to connect these to our network, which causes a certain amount of problems…”  Another challenge is that student equipment joining the network can be completely lacking in cyber security software or the software is out of date.  Students also commonly download programmes from unsafe sites, so there is a constant barrage of viruses hitting the system.  The college had a purpose built but outdated Network Access Control (NAC) system, which the college was looking to replace. It was originally installed 14 years ago, giving visibility to the network, but not much else and therefore was no longer fit for purpose.

The Solution

The IT team were looking for a solution that would meet the current and future needs of their organisation whilst allowing them flexibility. They reviewed various NAC solutions on the market, with the main priority being finding a good fit for their existing technology which was affordable. After a thorough evaluation they chose C-STEM* to deploy Forescout CounterACT** as it gave them the cost effective visibility they required plus many additional benefits. According to Coe, the value that the CounterACT combined with C-STEM’s expertise “blew the competition out of the water”. 

C-STEM were recommended to Corpus Christi College by Forescout, one of their partners, due to their prior experience in similar university deployments, making them an ideal choice. 

C-STEM’s vast knowledge and experience in device visibility and control helped the college to refine its brief and was able to highlight additional added value.  Andrew Willmott, C-STEM’s R & D engineer commented “using our knowledge of Forescout, we were able to make use of the open integration module which ensured that we were able to configure the switches to the level the college required.”

C-STEM worked with the college’s IT team to fully understand and qualify the objectives. They then installed the Forescout CounterACT, ensuring that the implementation went smoothly, aligned to the agreed success criteria.