Higher Education

Higher Education Bandwidth Management:

Effective Bandwidth Management Requires Complete Visibility into User Activity
For many colleges and universities, maintaining compliance with the Higher Education Act (HEA) is considered a top priority. This recent legislation requires institutions to monitor and control bandwidth usage for all users. With Network Composer, you gain complete visibility and understanding of all applications and users on your network allowing you to see at-a-glance how the actions of one user impact your Internet connection as a whole. With visual analytics to pinpoint your organization's security and bandwidth issues, you can more accurately troubleshoot issues and quickly solve problems.

Network Composer utilizes both basic and Layer 7 application signatures to quickly and accurately identify all application requests – even those that attempt to mask themselves. These signatures, combined with dynamic application bandwidth control, help to minimize network latency and ensure that critical traffic has the resources necessary to achieve peak performance. Effective bandwidth management can eliminate the need for further investment in bandwidth upgrades and ensure your campus is HEA compliant.

Allocate Bandwidth Optimize Internet Performance
Unlike port-based rate limiting, Network Composer employs dynamic bandwidth shaping that creates a very efficient Internet connection. Network Composer includes a full suite of bandwidth control tools that allows users to take control of their Internet connection.

• Dynamic Bandwidth Shaping: 7 levels of priority are available to ensure the correct amount of bandwidth is being used by the appropriate users, applications and content. Bandwidth will dynamically allocate in real time based on the priorities set within a policy.
• Application Shaping: Prioritize and/or limit the amount of bandwidth available to certain applications.
• Content Shaping: Prioritize and/or limit the amount of bandwidth available to URL content. Allow access to high bandwidth sites such as youtube.com with the confidence that the traffic will not utilize a large portion of bandwidth.
• Group Shaping: Prioritize and/or limit the amount of bandwidth available to a specific group of users. Group shaping also allows for dynamic bandwidth prioritization so that less critical groups get access to bandwidth as long as it's not needed by critical groups
• User Shaping: Similar to group shaping, prioritize or limit bandwidth to individual users-even dynamically based on priority

Granular Reporting
Network Composer provides administrators with visibility into details of your Internet traffic. The drill down capability allows you to get all the information you need on user/group activity, web traffic, application traffic and threat sources. The reporting engine is integrated into the Network Composer and does not require a standalone report server.

Real Time Reporting

• Total Internet Traffic
• Application Traffic, Total Traffic, Application set and application detail
• Web Browsing by URL, Category and User

Historic Reporting
Comprehensive Reporting for:

• Top Internet Users
• Top Bandwidth Users
• User/Group Activity
• Application Traffic
• P2P Usage
• URL/Category Usage
• And much more!

Report Broadcasts

• Send regularly scheduled reports to those who need them - so they can make the right decisions for your organization.

Higher Education Malware Protection:

Threat Management for Higher Education
As the Internet becomes increasingly critical to your school, students will be accessing more and more content while exposing your network to new and potentially dangerous network security issues.  As a gateway device, Cymphonix adds an extra layer of malware protection.

Stop Internet threats from impacting your network.
Network Composer provides deep packet inspection gateway antispyware and antivirus protection for web based Malware threats. A combined approach is used to provide robust protection against Malware.

• URL Malware Database Matching: Network Composer leverages several databases including the industry-leading Sunbelt Software CounterSpy^TM database
• Class ID Matching: Checks ActiveX and Flash ojects for Malware
• MD5 Sum Matching: Checks MD5 sum on files (exe., com)
• Real Time File Scanning: Scans user downloaded file in real time checking for Malware
• Identifies infected PCs: Track and report computers that are infected with Malware.
• Spyware Removal: Clean PCs infected with Spyware with an client ActiveX removal tool.

Deep-Packet Malware Detection
The challenge with only using a database to protect against spyware is that unknown threats can get through, but this isn't the case with Network Composer. It looks deep into the packet payload for spyware in file downloads and page loads -regardless of the URL.

Granular Reporting
Network Composer provides administrators with visibility into details of your Internet traffic. The drill down capability allows you to get all the information you need on user/group activity, web traffic, application traffic and threat sources. The reporting engine is integrated into the Network Composer and does not require a standalone report server.

Real Time Reporting

• Total Internet Traffic
• Application Traffic, Total Traffic, Application set and application detail
• Web Browsing by URL, Category and User

Historic Reporting
Comprehensive Reporting for:

• Top Internet Users
• Top Bandwidth Users
• User/Group Activity
• Application Traffic
• P2P Usage
• URL/Category Usage
• And much more!

Report Broadcasts

• Send regularly scheduled reports to those who need them - so they can make the right decisions for your organization

Higher Education Application Control:

Regain Control Over Internet Resources Consumed by File-sharing Applications
The United States Congress recently signed into law the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 2008 that requires campuses to implement technology-based deterrents to combat unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material though means such as Peer-to-Peer file sharing.  The law states that approved deterrents include bandwidth shaping and traffic monitoring to identify the largest bandwidth users and will also require institutions to certify to the Secretary of Education that they have developed a plan to control illegal file sharing.

The Cymphonix Network Composer effectively meets these requirements by providing:

• Dynamic Bandwidth and Content Shaping: Network Composer allows administrators to set priorities and bandwidth usage rules on Internet traffic so that critical applications and websites are never slowed by non-critical sites like MySpace, YouTube or site categories like P2P. Campuses are able to dynamically block or even scale back the amount of bandwidth sites like kaaza® are allowed to access and Network Composer automates the enforcement of campus Internet policies.
   
• Event and User Correlation: Network Composer provides granular online user activity reports, details regarding which applications and sites each user visits, as well as how much bandwidth each user consumes.
   
• Inline, Deep Packet Inspection Device: Installing between the external firewall and internal network, the Network Composer appliance dynamically monitors and controls traffic and application requests at the gateway.
   
• Layer 7 Application Control: With Network Composer, administrators are able to not only control Internet-based content that is traversing their connection, but also have control over Web-enabled application traffic such as iTunes, kazza, IM and other P2P file sharing mechanisms.

Dynamically Prioritize Applications
Network Composer users Layer 7 application matching technology to make it easy to control how much bandwidth is allocated to specific applications. So, regardless of the port packets are passing through, the device can categorize the traffic and apply policy accordingly. This superior approach to controlling application traffic allows for better blocking of malicious applications while prioritizing resources for critical applications.

• Application Blocking: Completely block applications that you don't want passing traffic over your Internet connection
• Dynamic Application Bandwidth Control: Prioritize bandwidth based on priority so non-critical applications can still be allowed but at a lower priority than critical applications.
• P2P Application Control: Block or prioritize bandwidth usage for P2P applications
• Layer 3-7 Application Signatures: Over 650 signatures used to accurately identify applications
• Detection of Port Hopping Applications: Deep packet inspection ensures that port hopping applications like IM and P2P are properly identified
• Application Monitoring: Watch application traffic in real time or historically to find out what applications require the most resources and what users are consuming the largest amount of application bandwidth.

Granular Reporting
Network Composer provides administrators with visibility into details of your Internet traffic. The drill down capability allows you to get all the information you need on user/group activity, web traffic, application traffic and threat sources. The reporting engine is integrated into the Network Composer and does not require a standalone report server.

Real Time Reporting

• Total Internet Traffic
• Application Traffic, Total Traffic, Application set and application detail
• Web Browsing by URL, Category and User

Historic Reporting
Comprehensive Reporting for:

• Top Internet Users
• Top Bandwidth Users
• User/Group Activity
• Application Traffic
• P2P Usage
• URL/Category Usage
• And much more!

Report Broadcasts

• Send regularly scheduled reports to those who need them - so they can make the right decisions for your organization