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CASE STUDY: Safeguarding students from online threats, cyber-bullying & harmful content

ABOUT GREENWOOD ACADEMIES TRUST

The Greenwood Academies Trust (GAT) currently has 36 open academies educating approximately 17,000 pupils across seven local authority areas including Nottingham City,
Nottinghamshire, Leicester City, Northamptonshire, Peterborough, Lincolnshire and Central Bedfordshire

In 2018, Equilibrium were approached by Greenwood Academies Trust to help them achieve their Cyber Essentials certification. However, instead of simply ‘getting them through the assessment’ like so many other Cyber Essentials certification bodies, we chose to meet with the academy to understand to their organisation and help to improve their overall security posture. This meant that the Cyber Essentials Plus certification would be a by-product of good security practice. Since this initial engagement and helping them comply with the Cyber Essentials criteria, we have become a trusted partner who provide advice on all of their security issues.

As a Cisco Partner with an Advanced Security Specialisation, we have many years of expertise across the Cisco Security portfolio. A key component of our expertise is web-based cloud security. Naturally, when Greenwood’s web filtering solution was up for renewal, the academy approached us to recommend a suitable replacement.

We spent some time discussing the benefits of Cisco Umbrella, the DNS-based filtering solution which has the ability to filter threats before the users’ traffic even reaches the Cisco Umbrella cloud. Although they were very interested in the product and our ability to integrate this effectively for them, we had come across the school safeguarding solution Securly that would both satisfy their requirement for strong web-filtering but also provide significant safeguarding capabilities. We identified that this solution would analyse social media posts, web searches and emails that refer to self-harm and depression. It also has a unique algorithm that can perform sentiment analysis.

Equilibrium Security’s Director, Anish Chauhan has 1 daughter in secondary school and another fast approaching. Being able to support schools with this capability is something that is personal to Anish, and goes beyond providing enterprise solutions for corporations. After working hard to get a good commercial deal for the academy, they implemented the solution within just a few days and were very happy with the solutions advanced capabilities. Moving forward, Equilibrium Security and Greenwood Academies Trust will continue to enjoy a strong collaborative working relationship.

About Securly
Securly is a cloud-based safeguarding solution which enables schools to enforce web filtering and closely monitor content on student devices. Using artificial intelligence Securly can monitor social media, web searches and documents to identify cyber bullying, suicidal thoughts and inappropriate content. Their human safeguarding team is there around the clock to help schools identify risks.

Securly is far more than just a web filtering solution. It provides deep visibility into school-owned devices to safeguard children from online threats. Living in the digital age, a huge proportion of youngsters spend hours of their day online. However, as the prevalence of cyber-bullying and suicide rates are on the rise, it is important for schools to be able to monitor their students ‘online lives’. Securly’s web filtering, cyber-bullying monitoring, and self-harm alerts, provides incredible value to students, parents and staff. Students should not have to suffer in silence,  schools need solutions that meet the dangers children are facing right now.

 
If you would like to find out more about how Equilibrium can support your school or university with Cyber Security requirements, please feel free to get in touch using the details below.

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