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Memphis Schools Stop Cyber-Trespassers with the IBM FirewallIBM Firewall provides the first line of defense for a new ATM fiber network A few years ago, the Memphis, Tennessee school district enrolled six schools in an educational reform program that combines community accountability, learning-by-doing, and judicious use of technology to improve students’ academic performance. Because each participating school needed an Internet connection, the six chosen buildings became the first in the district to venture into cyberspace, taking the central office and a large resource center along for the ride.The Internet was uncharted territory for the district, and Memphis City Schools administrators refused to set foot into the great unknown without first erecting a barricade that would both shield students from objectionable material and protect private data on the district’s enterprise network from prying eyes. The solution they chose was the IBM SecureWay™ Firewall, a sturdy software “fence” that has stood sentry over the assets of IBM and global corporations for more than a decade. Shortly after its installation in Memphis, the IBM Firewall barred entry to a pornographic site in Denmark that was knocking on the school district’s door, and it has regularly thwarted access by other unauthorized users ever since. The IBM SecureWay Firewall enables secure e-business by controlling all communications to and from the Internet. Unlike most other firewalls, the IBM Firewall contains all three critical firewall architectures—filtering, proxy, and circuit level gateway—to provide high levels of security and flexibility. In addition, the IBM Firewall: IBM Firewall Provides the First Line of Defense Today, with the school district in the midst of a major infrastructure upgrade that will enable all of its schools to access the Internet via a new ATM fiber network, the IBM Firewall has become the district’s first line of defense against outside interlopers.According to Betty Stanley, network and technical services manager for the school district, “We see the IBM Firewall as the best measure we can take to protect our students and our enterprise data, which ranges from student grades and test scores to personnel records.” She adds, “The IBM Firewall was easy to implement, has proved to be very stable, and is a strategic piece of our present and future infrastructure.”
The Co-NECT Connection Accelerates the Technology Upgrade With nearly 180 schools, 20 alternative learning centers, and 120,000 students, Memphis City Schools is the 19th largest school district in the country, and it has recently made impressive gains in its struggle against the special challenges that face every urban school system. Under the leadership of Superintendent Gerry House, the district has implemented a variety of comprehensive school reform models that have led to measurable increases in student achievement over the past few years.One of the first reform models adopted was the Co-NECT system, a New American Schools initiative that fully integrates technology into the curriculum to enrich and extend teaching and learning. This reform model required an Internet connection both to equip teachers and administrators with e-mail and to link them to a Web-based source of tools, templates, and curriculum ideas provided by the program. With Co-NECT as the catalyst, the district decided to wire 100 workstations at the district’s Teaching and Learning Academy and nearly 500 workstations at the administration center for research and e-mail purposes. The district’s T1 connection went live in 1996, and the IBM Firewall immediately went to work. The School District Survives a Few Close Calls Initially after the installation, Buddy Morton, the school district’s Webmaster, checked the log created by the firewall every morning to determine whether any would-be visitors had been turned away. When he discovered the attempted intrusion by the Scandinavian pornographic site, he breathed a sigh of relief that the software had done its job and e-mailed a cease-and-desist request.No would-be X-rated trespassers have been detected since then, but there have been occasional individuals whose requests for entry have been denied. Although those requests might have been innocent contacts, they have given Morton unsettling visions of the incident in the movie War Games in which the protagonist hacks into the school computer to change his and his girlfriend’s grades. “Without a firewall,” Morton explains, “we run the risk that someone will try to alter their own grades, change the grades or salaries of someone they don’t like, pry into special education files or disciplinary records, ‘spam’ our employees via e-mail, or even reroute a student from a legitimate Web site to a URL with inappropriate material. Those are risks that we cannot afford to take.” Security Stems from District-Wide Protection Addressing these complex security needs, the district’s new ATM fiber network will extend the protection of the IBM Firewall to every school in the district. Partially funded by the federal government’s E-Rate program that provides technology assistance to the country’s neediest schools, the new system is designed to improve connectivity throughout the school district and beyond. The system will consolidate a 9.6 multidrop network that connects each school to the administrative applications in the district’s SNA-based mainframe. It will also connect an enterprise T1 link that took the first workstations in the district onto the information superhighway and an ISDN network that was installed in a number of schools by the Tennessee Department of Education.The plan is to fully integrate the district’s diverse data networks, including Internet, e-mail, and enterprise server access. In addition, a new voice, data, and video network has been designed to bring telephones to every classroom, permit video-based distance learning, and enable administrators in different buildings to communicate via videoconference. The eventual goal is to have six network drops in every classroom and ten drops in every library. “We had grave concerns when we first moved onto the Internet about what our students would be exposed to and what we could do to limit that,” Stanley explains. “Even with our Acceptable Use Policy and URL blocking system, we know it is difficult to have 100 percent control over what our students try to access when they surf the Internet from inside the district. But the IBM Firewall does protect students from unsolicited access from the outside world. It keeps hackers at bay, and we believe that is an essential requirement for any school environment.” For more information visit www.ibm.com/software/security/firewall. |
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