Chequamegon School District Network Security

The Chequamegon School District like most schools makes heavy use of online content for communication, document storage and production, research and other uses.  The Chequamegon School District feels strongly that there are many more benefits than detriments to being online.

Network security comes in two forms, user safety and data safety. 

 User Safety
The Chequamegon School District is required to provide a safe experience for all minor students when they are online.  There are federal regulations that control what we as a school district must do to ensure that safe experience.  The Child Internet Protect Act of 2000 or CIPA is the primary regulation we as a school district must adhere to.  The other regulation, The Child On-line Protection Act or COPA enacted in 1998 was struck down with a permanent injunction against the law in 2009 as a violation of free speech.
The CIPA act requires the school district to use web filters to block pornography and other indecent material available on the Internet from reaching minor students.  

The Chequamegon School District uses an E-Class NSA 4500 Sonicwall Firewall device to provide gateway protection services.  These protection services include 
  • First generation web filter that uses standard URL blocking, with allowed and disallowed URLs and keyword blocking - this has limited use
  • Gateway Anti-virus protection
  • Gateway Intrusion Prevention - Blocks hackers from entering the network or accessing devices or data on the network
  • Gateway Malware Prevention - This blocks malware or malicious software from infecting user devices
  • Application Intelligence - A new technology that uses application signature IDs to manage Web 2.0 technologies.  With Application Intelligence we can control any web applications by allowing, blocking, or managing its bandwidth and we can do this on a schedule
Wireless Network 
The district wireless network employs multiple security features in addition to the Sonicwall gateway device.  On the CSDPublic wireless network,  clients receive IP addresses in an isolated network preventing them from accessing any other devices.  Should a client device on this network become infected with a virus or trojan the damage is contained to that single client system.  Also, on the CSDPublic wireless network client stations are not only protected by the gateway Sonicwall Internet and intrusion prevention filters, but they are additionally protected by an adult content filter provided by the wireless system itself.
Data Safety
User data is constantly under threat from many different sources on the Internet.  These threats come in all forms such as phishing attacks, viruses, malware, scareware, and hacking.

The district recently purchased an E-Class NSA 4500 Sonicwall firewall with gateway protection services.  These gateway protection services are just the first layer of protection we employ to keep user data secure.

All Windows-based laptops and workstations have been secured with Deep-Freeze.  This is a software program that prevents changes to the operating system of the computer.  Therefore, if the system was to become infected with a virus or any form of malware, a simple reboot will revert the system back to its frozen state wiping out the malware infection.

All users have been provided the tools for easily backing up their data off-site using cloud-based services.  The most frequently used is Dropbox.com.  With Dropbox.com all user files are automatically synchronized to their online account over a secure connection.  Should any files get inadvertently deleted or corrupted or otherwise unreadable, the Dropbox.com site can go back in time to retrieve a previous version.

The school district is also a registered Google Apps for Education school. As a result of this, users are able to create and edit files directly online using a web browser.  The browser connection to the user files is over a secure connection at all times.  The files remain located at the very secure Google data centers.  A new feature of the Google Apps for Education system is Google Drive.  Google Drive operates in the same manner as Dropbox allowing students to save their files in their Google Drive and have them synchronized to the cloud and to their other devices.

There is no better security system than user knowledge.  A well informed user is aware of the various methods being used to get user data and to steal personal information.  We are constantly instructing users of attack methods and what to look for when being asked to provide private information.

Current threats to any network can be seen here.