GWGuardian Provides Efficient Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus Protection in the International Environment at Bodø University College
Background
Just North of the Arctic Circle you can find Bodø, the biggest city in Nordland County, Norway, and the regional centre of administration, education, culture, commerce and communication. Bodø's population of over 40000 enjoys all the services and conveniences demanded in a modern college city. Bodø University College is one of Norway's most progressive institutions of higher education. In recent years, the international environment at Bodø University College has grown and more and more students participate in numerous exchange programmes. Over 4500 students and 400 staff members share the Bodø University College's three campuses in Bodø, Stokmarknes, and Mo I Rana. The messaging infrastructure at the three campuses depends on 2 GroupWise servers used by 5000 users in 8 domains.
Challenge
"They had a problem with the large amounts of spam and viruses which they received over the email system," explains Patrick Frontéri of Frontéri Network Consluting, the Novell partner who implemented the GWGuardian Academic Edition Messaging Firewall at Bodø University College. "Their GroupWise email system had no spam filter whatsoever before choosing GWGuardian. Virus-scanning was performed on servers and workstations. After we implemented GWGuardian, there was an immediate reduction in the virus infections on workstations, as viruses and other security threats are already stopped on the GWGuardian server."
Solution
"We started testing GWGuardian Academic Edition. During the trial period we found out that the solution not only provided exactly what we wanted and needed, but also functioned very well," continues Frontéri. "We looked at a few other products, but overall, when we compared price and functionality, we assessed that GWGuardian Academic Edition was best for our client.
"During the evaluation period, we tested and compared GWGuardian to other systems," explains Håvard Haugan, in charge of the GWGuardian implementation at Bodø University College. "The feedback from the users was that they liked GWGuardian. The end user features were user-friendly and very intuitive. The IT team involved in the testing and decision-making process was also very positive."
"Installing and configuring GWGuardian was an easy and straightforward precedure. All we had to do was re-route incoming emails to GWGuardian and outgoing emails from GroupWise to GWGuardian on the firewall and the solution was up and running. Our GroupWise consultant Patrick Frontéri provided assistance to us through Terminal Services directly to the GWGuardian server. With the long distances in Norway, this is a great way to get professionals to help us out."
The deployment of GWGuardian has brought direct benefits both to the IT department and the end users. Email-borne viruses are stopped and removed by GWGuardian before they even enter the GroupWise system. As a result of this preemeptive defense, there has been a large reduction in the number of infected workstations on the different campuses. In turns, this has dramatically reduced the workload on the IT Department. The spam that used to plague end users has been reduced to almost nothing. Thus, the deployment of GWGuardian has undoubtedly resulted in increased productivity and improved communication over email.
