San Jose State Sets Up Firewall from Palo Alto Networks

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 05/21/08

San Jose State University has selected a firewall from Palo Alto Networks to stop threats and provide application visibility and control on its campus networks. The school, part of the California State University system, has installed the PA-4000 Series firewall.

"San Jose State University, like many large schools, has significant IT resources to serve our faculty, staff and students," said Bob Neal, senior director of network services. "Ensuring those resources are not overwhelmed by threats and risky applications is challenging, given the nature of university environments. The PA-4000 Series enables us to understand and control applications on our networks to achieve that goal."

Within minutes of routing traffic through the PA-4000 Series, according to a statement from the vendor, university IT staff were able to detect and stop a variety of threats, and noticed 15 different types of peer-to-peer applications.

The firewall classifies traffic with a technology the company calls App-ID, which identifies applications traversing the network to provide visibility and control over the data. The software includes tools that aid the administrator in interpreting network traffic and includes an editor for setting up security policies. The application integrates with Microsoft Active Directory, which enables the administrator to set up policies based on user and group information taken from the directory as well as IP address. The company said in a statement that the firewall detects and blocks viruses, spyware and worms in real-time.

San Jose State has 30,000 students across seven colleges.