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CRYPTOCard’s BlackShield ID provides Wycombe High School with secure remote network access for teaching and support staff
December 2009 by Marc Jacob
Top girls’ grammar school, Wycombe High School, has selected BlackShield ID from CRYPTOCard enabling it to provide teaching and non-teaching staff with secure remote access to the school network.
The new CRYPTOCard authentication server meets the latest guidelines from Becta – the government agency driving effective and innovative use of ICT in schools - requiring two-factor authentication (2FA) for remote access to key parts of the school’s management systems and allows staff to access sensitive data securely when working from home or elsewhere off-site.
Durable and cost-effective
Looking ahead, Wycombe High School also plans to use the CRYPTOCard security solution to protect teacher accounts from unauthorised access inside the network. And here, Woodward was particularly impressed that their two-factor authentication solution worked across several platforms with no additional charge for this further functionality.
Education initiative
CRYPTOCard has strong experience in supporting the education sector and established customers include Yorkshire and Humberside Grid for Learning, Redcar Local Authority and Ashdown School. The company’s server-based and managed service (Password-as-a-Service) 2FA solutions are ideally suited to support Becta’s published best practice guidance on how schools should protect sensitive data, including secure remote access.
A recent survey of secondary schools by CRYPTOCard showed that 95 per cent of respondents provide remote access to either a VPN or web portal and 40 per cent provide remote network access to third parties as well as staff. Leaving this access unsecured is tantamount to allowing strangers to wander around a school unchecked – hugely risky with untold potential costs in case of a security breach.
