SUNY College at Old Westbury Optimizes Bandwidth with SonicWALL Next-Generation Firewalls

New York State University Utilizes Application Intelligence and Control to Prioritize and Manage Network Traffic

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Jun 17, 2011, 08:00 ET

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SonicWALL, Inc., the leading provider of intelligent network security and data protection solutions, today announced that State University of New York (SUNY) College at Old Westbury, successfully deployed SonicWALL® E-Class Network Security Appliance (NSA) E7500 Next-Generation Firewalls to optimize bandwidth usage and secure its network. The College's network supports over 4,300 students, 250 faculty members, 300 non-faculty staff and is part of the statewide SUNY system comprised of 64 campuses.

As student and faculty usage of social media grew exponentially, the campus witnessed massive growth in bandwidth consumption. SUNY's bandwidth demands exceeded the technical capabilities and architecture of the College's existing firewall. To better support the needs of the university, the College decided to replace its existing firewall with the E-Class NSA E7500 appliance in paired high availability (HA) mode. The College required next-generation firewall capabilities to better manage and optimize its bandwidth, as well as tie application traffic flows to particular users and groups.

"Faculty members often couldn't stream video properly in the classroom because we had hundreds of students consuming bandwidth on YouTube," said Marc Seybold, CIO at SUNY College at Old Westbury and current chair, SUNY Council of Chief Information Officers. "Since we couldn't tie users to traffic, we could only blanket-throttle all traffic, but as a result, the faculty still didn't get the performance they needed."

With the E-Class NSA E7500, Seybold is now able to view traffic flow and match it to specific users and groups, adding a new level of transparency and control. As a result, the College can now protect network users and institutional assets, while allowing faculty and students to accomplish their work unimpeded.

"When you look at the myriad of compromised personal computing devices that connect to our network, as well as the number of outside attacks, you're dealing with the Wild West," stated Seybold. "We needed a firewall with enterprise-level performance to withstand this environment. Granular policy controls now give us insight into how the available bandwidth is being used over different times during the day."

Engineered to meet the needs of the university's extensive network, the E-Class NSA E7500 provides Application Intelligence, Control and Visualization, Gateway Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, Intrusion Prevention, Anti-spam and Content Filtering. It combines SonicWALL Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection™ (RFDPI) with a multi-core platform. The E-Class NSA E7500 is configurable to analyze and control thousands of unique applications, whether unencrypted or encrypted with SSL to provide an extra layer of network security and visibility. In addition, it offers secure SSL VPN remote access and high availability to ensure continuous network connectivity.

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State University of New York (SUNY) College at Old Westbury

Located on the historic North Shore of New York's Long Island, the State University of New York College at Old Westbury is a small public college that seeks to teach its more than 4,300 students to lead at work, in the community and in life. In an environment that demands academic excellence and offers close interaction among students and faculty, Old Westbury offers baccalaureate degrees in more than 40 majors through three academic schools – Arts & Sciences, Business and Education – including degrees that have earned accreditation from the prestigious National Council on the Accreditation of Teacher Education. On the graduate level, Old Westbury offers 15 graduate degree programs in accounting, adolescence education, mental health counseling and taxation. The institution in 2010 was named by U.S. News and World Report as having the most diverse student body among liberal arts colleges in America.

About SonicWALL, Inc.

Guided by its vision of Dynamic Security for the Global Network, SonicWALL develops advanced intelligent network security and data protection solutions that adapt as organizations evolve and as threats evolve. Trusted by small and large enterprises worldwide, SonicWALL solutions are designed to detect and control applications and protect networks from intrusions and malware attacks through award-winning hardware, software and virtual appliance-based solutions. For more information, visit http://www.sonicwall.com/.

Copyright © 2011 SonicWALL, Inc. All rights reserved. SONICWALL® is a registered trademark of SonicWALL, Inc. and all other SonicWALL product and service names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of SonicWALL, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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