Bridgewater College Implements Nevis Appliance for Network Security

• By David Nagel
• 07/23/08

Bridgewater College has selected the LANenforcer security appliance from Nevis Networks to secure its campus networks. The school chose the Nevis LANenforcer for access control, policy enforcement, and regulatory reporting. The appliance blocks malicious code and scans endpoints prior to granting network access.

"An in-line appliance gives us far greater control over network access than an out-of-band solution ever could," said David Parsley, manager of network services. "The LANenforcer met all of our needs, and is the only solution we could find capable of operating at a full 10 gigabit-per-second data rate."

The security appliance performs a security audit before allowing network access, quarantining clients that don't match security policies. Policy enforcement is achieved through per-user stateful firewall rules that create a "personal DMZ" for each authorized user and guest on the LAN. The system also logs the identity of all users and monitors all network activity to help comply with regulatory requirements, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

LANenforcer is deployed at the network access level, between access switches and the network, where it aggregates all traffic to provide individualized access control, along with threat detection and response.

Bridgewater College has about 1,500 students and is located in Virginia's Central Shenandoah Valley.