AI and automation address cybersecurity concerns

In today’s hyperconnected world of BYOD and IoT, it’s not enough for a K-12 school district to rely on a hand full of laptops on carts and Internet access. The network and cloud services are increasingly used by teachers for lessons, homework assignments and communicating with parents and administrators. And it often makes sense to let students use the endpoints that they’re familiar with as nearly 90 percent of what they’re asked to do is now online. A shorter learning curve equates to happier users.

IT团队的目标是确保网络经验快速安全。幸运的是，刷新的时候总有更新的高性能无线选择。更大的挑战是将网络在边缘和网络内部保护，因为新的BYOD和IOT设备，如监控摄像机，HVAC控制器和温度监测器都连接到网络。

For K-12 schools like Pearland Independent School District in Texas, all of this must be managed, monitored and secured by a lean IT staff. The same team is also responsible for addressing the District’s mission to deliver an amazing network experience across 23 campuses and 4 administrative and support buildings for its 22,000 students, and 2,700 teachers and staff.

“自动化是关键”，“皮尔兰科德州首席技术官Greg Bartay说。“有关一个示例，我们的插头和播放网络允许我们将Aruba接入点或IoT设备连接到交换机，而无需重新配置它们。现在的目标是自动收集关于在我们有线和无线网络上连接的端点行为的更好数据。“

膨胀高达802.11ax

To date, 2,200 Aruba APs have supported the bulk of the district’s coverage requirements, however the IT team is planning to refresh each of their campuses and buildings with Aruba’s new 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) APs to ensure that they’re ready for future network demands.

As Wi-Fi 6 enabled devices start connecting to the network it will be easy to leverage multi-user capabilities that automatically improve the performance for everyone and everything, even IoT devices. The greater speed, throughput and multi-gigabit capacity that the 802.11ax APs deliver will be key, according to Bartay.

“我们所有地点的完全覆盖和连接是关键”，“巴尔莱说。“我们在所有教室里都有接入点，并覆盖我们所有的公共领域，我们正在扩展到建筑物外角的覆盖范围，以支持我们与城市和当地警方到位的安全措施。”

When considering the refresh, Bartay looked at a couple of other vendors, but given the Pearland’s long-term relationship and success with Aruba solutions, he chose to stay with what was working well for the district. To make the most of the district’s funding, they tapped into E-Rate funding to move forward with their plans.

安全Automation and Orchestration

Pearland IT团队正在寻找利用自动化来帮助保护网络的方法。访问Aruba客户体验中心后，Barray和团队决定使用Aruba的内省解决方案启动PoC。在小时内挖掘日志中，而不是拥有他们的精简IT团队，而是允许它们从Splunk和其他现有解决方案馈送数据以自动查找端点行为的更改。

The user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) and Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) capabilities provided by IntroSpect would allow for greater visibility using AI-driven machine learning and other advanced analytics to deliver near-real time insights. Bartay and his team could detect and locate attacks and remediate issues much more quickly. “Big data is worthless without actionable reporting,” Bartay says.

IntroSpect catches an attack before it does damage

即使在购买内部之前，该团队也能够检测网络上的情绪恶意软件的实例。教师因未知原因被锁定在他们的帐户中，它无法确定原因或者问题来自的原因。内省能够收集数据，并指出特定端点的变化，这些行为在快速识别首先看的位置。

在90分钟内,它能够iso邮递到梨城late the subnet hit by the malware, find the machine that let it in and deliver the system to the IT team, a process that took other school districts six weeks to accomplish. The result was that sensitive data was protected, attackers were prevented from moving laterally to other endpoints (computers and IoT devices) while operations were uninterrupted.

“作为一个教育机构，我们不能像许多私营部门的企业那样限制性，”巴特说。“我们必须提供对我们的用户的访问，以便他们可能不像我们希望它们一样稳定。挑战是在没有干扰教育过程的情况下继续前进。“

Leveraging ClearPass Policy Enforcement

Pearland还实施了Aruba Clearpass，以取代Avaya / Extreme的老化系统。由于内省和清除通道旨在共同努力，该计划是使用产品积极响应攻击，因为发现事件。
“We all want to take it one step further,” mentioned Arturo Gonzalez, network manager at Pearland ISD. “We want IntroSpect to leverage ClearPass to take action on actual alerts instead of informing us of suspect behavior.”

在未来，而不是物理上将终端在ModeTex示例中的位置，从内克检查的警报可能会触发lexpass以自动更改违规端点的身份验证状态。然后可以花在与最终用户花费的时间来确定在遇到恶意软件的位置以及如何将来避免它。

Delivering user expectations and ROI

很容易看出，Pearland IT团队正在经历您在任何环境中找到的许多相同挑战。联网设备的密度正在增长，更多的应用程序是基于云的，并且安全性是一个顶级关注，因为无缝的移动性和Byod连接是用户期望的。

“As a networking expert you have to know your business and be aware of the overall objectives and strategic goals,” says Bartay. “And in the end the solutions you choose must offer the innovation, performance and the reliability that delivers the ROI that your team can measure.”