Azusa’s technology team reduces phishing and other cybersecurity and safety risks with ManagedMethods’ Cloud Monitor and Content Filter products
Background
Like many school districts, state-of-the-art technology is at the forefront of Azusa Unified’s educational mission. As Director of Technology, Manuel Sanchez’s job is to make the district’s tech stack the best (and safest) it can be.
However, that’s not always a walk in the park. With over 6,700 K-12 students and 1,300 staff members, Sanchez’s team keeps busy.
Challenge
“We have a team of technicians on-site supporting minor issues,” Sanchez said. “But at the district level, there’s only three of us managing cybersecurity among other duties.”
Indeed, Azusa has two analysts. One handles the school’s network, the other tackles infrastructure, and Sanchez oversees everything else. However, as he explained, three pairs of hands aren’t always enough.
“Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 security tools will show you some analytics, but you really don’t have the ability to take action on it quickly. Cloud Monitor allows me to see every aspect of what is going on in my cloud domains, then it lets me take action.”
— Manuel Sanchez, Director of Technology, Azusa Unified School District
“We do what we can to mitigate issues and prevent things from coming up,” he said. “Realistically, my network guy is strong on his side, and my systems guy is strong on his, but none of us are specifically trained for cybersecurity. So, we often struggle to try and find ways to discover potential threats in our environment.”
This challenge is even more daunting when it comes to cloud security. Azusa USD migrated to Google Workspace several years before Sanchez’s tenure. He was working at another district, but he said that at the time, schools began diving headfirst into the cloud, not fully knowing what security risks there could be.
“You’re jumping into something someone else controls, and the security landscape is constantly changing,” he explained. “To a degree, you’re at the mercy of Google or Microsoft. They give you some tools to monitor traffic and security, but there’s no training. So, you have to read up whenever you can to figure out how best to protect information.”
Fortunately for Sanchez, his past experiences have taught him the value of a multilayered cybersecurity strategy, which he’s carried over to Azusa. He explained that his philosophy is about making a hacker’s job as difficult as possible.
“The more complicated it is for someone to compromise us, the better it’s going to be,” he said. “So, after coming to Azusa and realizing we needed more protection, I decided to find something that would allow me to mitigate cloud threats in one application.”
Solution
Ultimately, Sanchez simply wanted visibility. In other words, he needed insight into all content within Azusa’s Google and Microsoft 365 environments, what people can access, and how they’re using it. More importantly, he wanted oversight of all platforms through a single centralized dashboard.
“Using Cloud Monitor, we quickly started seeing fewer phishing emails as it became easier for us to properly track who was sending out that email. More importantly, it allowed our staff and students to know that illegitimate emails weren’t getting through.”
— Manuel Sanchez, Director of Technology, Azusa Unified School District
That’s around the time when he found ManagedMethods. Once he did, it didn’t take him long to request a free trial. In fact, just 10 minutes after discovering what Cloud Monitor can do, he asked for a quote.
In short, the platform scans your cloud domain and alerts you to potential risks whenever it finds one. This can include anything from malicious emails and unsanctioned apps to signs of violence or student self-harm.
“When my rep started explaining what it was, I realized it is everything I had at my previous district rolled into one,” he explained. “The visibility it would give me into Google Workspace was amazing, so I immediately said, ‘I love it. Let’s do what we have to do to get this kicked off.'”
Results
“You don’t know what you don’t know. Unless you have the budget to hire somebody to monitor your environment 24/7, you need a solution like Cloud Monitor by ManagedMethods to help you do it.”
— Manuel Sanchez, Director of Technology, Azusa Unified School District
According to Sanchez, Cloud Monitor is a marked improvement over the built-in tools available in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
“They’ll show you some analytics, but you can’t really take action on it quickly,” he added. “Cloud Monitor allows me to see every aspect of what is going on in my cloud domains, then it lets me take action.”
Cloud Monitor has also helped Sanchez mitigate phishing attacks. As he explained, some users have received suspicious emails from Azusa staff members asking for credit card data and other information. So, he and his team created a policy that would alert them to these types of risks.
“We quickly started seeing fewer phishing emails as it became easier for us to properly track who was sending out that email,” he said. “More importantly, it allowed our staff and students to know that illegitimate emails weren’t getting through.”
Sanchez was so impressed with Cloud Monitor and working with ManagedMethods that he was open to taking a look at the company’s new Content Filter product when he learned it had launched.
Because Content Filter is a lightweight cloud-based web filter extension, he was able to start a Proof of Concept (POC) in the middle of the school year, running it at the same time as his existing web filter.
“With Content Filter, we were set up in about 15 minutes and we started seeing results almost immediately,” said Sanchez. “So, I can say that if you’re not sure which direction you want to go and you just want to give it a try, the POC has little to no impact in terms of getting it set up and running it in your environment.”
All school districts that receive federal e-Rate funding are required to use a web content filter for CIPA compliance purposes. Like most K-12 tech directors, Sanchez has used other web filters in the past, but what immediately impressed him about Content Filter was its simplicity and effectiveness.
“The first thing that jumped out at me was how simple and effective it is,” Sanchez explained. “With other web filters I’ve used, there’s too much to dig into. There’s so much you have to do just to modify settings, for example. With Content Filter, there’s not a lot to look at. It’s very simplistic, which makes it incredibly easy to set up and manage.”
In the end, Manuel Sanchez has advice for his fellow K-12 IT directors:
“As school districts with limited budgets and staffing, when it comes to looking for solutions there are ‘nice to haves’ and there are ‘need to haves’. Cloud Monitor and Content Filter are definitely a ‘need to haves’. The amount of visibility and control that you’re going to get from these products is amazing. I encourage everyone to try it out.”
