Webroot® Web and Endpoint Security Case Study
University of Missouri
University of Missouri Selects Webroot to Protect Campus Computers
Known as "Mizzou," the University of Missouri in Columbia is the state's largest public research university and one of the nation's top-tier institutions of higher education. It is one of only six public universities in the country with medical, veterinary medicine, and law schools all on one campus. The student body has a diverse enrollment with over 30,000 students from every state in the U.S. and more than 100 countries.
The Problem
Why University of Missouri chose Webroot:
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The Mizzou campus includes 22 student residence halls that hold approximately 230 computers and 20 servers. Many of the machines have public access and the students using them have varying levels of computer knowledge. In addition to legitimate academic research, many of the machines were being used for personal web surfing and became riddled with viruses. Users were inadvertently clicking on malicious links or visiting sites that were infested with malware.
The IT group charged with maintaining these machines for the department of Residential Life consists of just two people—Justin Harris, User Support Analyst, and Eric Leiss, Support Systems Administrator. Harris and Leiss were fighting an uphill battle—the malware infections were coming in so fast that machines were being rendered unusable. Already strapped for resources, the team rebuilt one to two machines per week, leaving no time for other duties.
The Solution
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"The impact on our productivity
has been unbelievable! We
have not had one infection since
the deployment."
-Eric Leiss |
Justin Harris first learned of Webroot® security solutions when he worked as a Best Buy® Geek Squad agent recommending and installing Webroot Spy Sweeper® on consumer PCs. "That's when I first learned how effective Webroot was against malware," he explains. After he came to Mizzou, Harris recommended Webroot's endpoint protection and it has served as the Mizzou Residential Life department's desktop anti-virus security for the past few years. But as malware has evolved, their security needed to as well.
"Our endpoint security used to be enough, but it can't keep up against today's threats. We still need it for remediation, but we needed that extra layer of defense at the perimeter. Each level catches more than the last," Leiss explains. "The web is the new battleground for security and we needed a web filtering solution."
The IT team researched several security solutions, and after doing a successful trial of Webroot Web Security, selected and deployed the service on all the machines.
"We urgently needed to get the solution in place quickly. The configuration was easy and the deployment was seamless—we rolled it out in stages," Harris says. "As we spread it wider we began to notice that all this bad stuff was being stopped. It was remarkable!"
Benefits
The computers at Mizzou protected by Webroot are now malware free. Residential Life IT no longer has to re-image machines weekly and end users have not been affected—aside from being glad that the machines are running faster. Harris and Leiss find Webroot Web Security Service to be a natural complement to the Webroot AV endpoint product.
Leiss explains: "The impact on our productivity has been unbelievable! That was the whole reason behind this—so it would free up our time to work on other projects. We have not had one infection since the deployment."
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