Why Marysville Chose Cloud Monitor for Unmatched Visibility Over Google’s Paid Security Tools
Five elementary schools, one intermediate school, one middle school, and two high schools.
That’s Marysville Exempted Village School District, about 20 miles northwest of Columbus, Ohio. With over 750 staff members, Marysville is committed to providing an exemplary education to more than 5,700 students. Of course, given today’s digital age, that means using technology to enhance the learning experience.
“Cloud Monitor has given me less anxiety knowing I’m going to get alerted when something happens. Cybersecurity is about all the pieces working together to protect your district, and Cloud Monitor was the missing piece for us. Honestly, if you don’t have a tool like Cloud Monitor, you’re a sitting duck.”
— Tom Powers, Director of Technology, Marysville EVSD
Marysville uses both Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals. Plus, it issues Chromebooks to students, which middle- and high-schoolers can take home.
As Director of Technology, Tom Powers oversees Marysville’s IT environment alongside a team of technicians. Together, they mitigate threats, investigate incidents, and protect their district from cyber harm—alongside their many, many additional duties.
The Challenge
Marysville was one of the early adopters to embrace Google Workspace for Education. Tom explained that the former IT director, Chris Deis, had an innovative plan and was proactive in introducing new educational technology to our students and staff.
Yet, dealing with cloud security was a challenge because it is so new, especially in K-12 schools. When the pandemic hit, students brought devices home for remote learning. While cloud apps helped students access school materials, they also caused some distractions. The district had to quickly learn to set time limits on each Chromebook to switch them off in the evening because students were staying up late using their devices.
“Cloud Monitor has been instrumental in helping us address several student safety situations. It allows us to dig into specific documents that contain problematic content. While our filtering solution provides alerts, it doesn’t let us access or manage the affected files. Cloud Monitor, on the other hand, enables us to open the document, revoke sharing permissions, quarantine it, or even delete it. The real strength of Cloud Monitor lies in its ability to let us take direct action on documents and emails—not just be alerted to issues.”
— Tom Powers, Director of Technology, Marysville EVSD
“Teaching digital citizenship was another big challenge,” Tom added. “Although Chromebooks can be fun for students, they’re meant for education. There were a lot of growing pains trying to balance what you should allow and what you must block.”
In the beginning, they depended on Google’s free security tools. But these didn’t provide enough granular information about what was happening. As Tom put it, “You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken.”
The Solution
In 2023, Tom received an email from ManagedMethods. He joined a demo of Cloud Monitor, looking for a way to bolster the district’s management and security of their Google Workspace.
“We did a demo of the paid Google security features, but it really didn’t give us the level of transparency that Cloud Monitor could provide. We knew we had risks in our Google domain, but we couldn’t dig into them. When we did the free trial, we saw those risks and were able to take action on them quickly. That was when we really knew that we needed this to keep our Google Workspace environment secure and safe.”
— Tom Powers, Director of Technology, Marysville EVSD
Around the same time, he also viewed a demo of Google Workspace’s paid version. However, it didn’t offer the same level of transparency as Cloud Monitor. Marysville didn’t have a big budget for this type of software, but fortunately, ManagedMethods works specifically with K-12 schools and understands districts’ needs. Ultimately, Tom chose Cloud Monitor.
“We did a demo of the paid Google security features, but it really didn’t give us the level of transparency that Cloud Monitor could provide. We knew we had risks in our Google domain, but we couldn’t dig into them. When we did the free trial of Cloud Monitor, we saw those risks and were able to take action on them quickly. That was when we really knew that we needed Cloud Monitor to keep our Workspace environment secure and safe.”
The key differentiators that prompted Tom to purchase Cloud Monitor boiled down to better transparency, visibility, and management in Google Workspace.
For starters, Cloud Monitor’s data loss prevention tools are more intuitive and easier to use. He could easily see when staff were sharing personally identifiable information (PII) inappropriately and fix the issue. For example, if someone shares a file containing social security numbers using global link share permissions, Cloud Monitor will automatically unshare the file and send a notification to the file owner.
The platform also automatically detects potential account compromises when a login occurs from outside the United States and proactively alerts Tom to the potential risk. Using Cloud Monitor, he can lock down the account, reset the password, and easily audit account logs to see if it accessed any sensitive files or sent any emails.
Cloud Monitor also makes managing emails in users’ inboxes easy. In just minutes, he can find and remove phishing emails that were delivered to hundreds of his users’ inboxes. Similarly, he found it much easier to manage files in the district’s Drives and Shared Drives compared to Google Plus tools. He can easily find specific files, see who they are shared with, who owns the file, and who edited it. If needed, he can quickly break the share, change the file owner, download access logs, and more.
The Results
Cloud Monitor uncovered risks immediately. In fact, during the demo, Tom saw potential threats he never would’ve otherwise found.
“Cloud Monitor provides us with transparency and control that I don’t think you can really get anywhere else,” Tom explained. “We’re able to see very quickly where accounts are being accessed from and determine when an account has been compromised. I love that it’s covering everything from Gmail to Google Drive.”
They’ve also used Cloud Monitor to investigate bullying alerts in Google Docs. It gives them more control over the document in question and has turned a time-consuming, multi-step process into a fast and easy workflow to remove access to a file
“Cloud Monitor provides us with transparency and control that I don’t think you can really get anywhere else. We’re able to see very quickly where accounts are being accessed from and determine when an account has been compromised. I love that it’s covering everything from Gmail to Google Drive.”
— Tom Powers, Director of Technology, Marysville EVSD
“Cloud Monitor has been instrumental in helping us address several student safety situations. It allows us to dig into specific documents that contain problematic content. While our filtering solution provides alerts, it doesn’t let us access or manage the affected files. Cloud Monitor, on the other hand, enables us to open the document, revoke sharing permissions, quarantine it, or even delete it. The real strength of Cloud Monitor lies in its ability to let us take direct action on documents and emails—not just be alerted to issues.”
Tom and his system administrator use the platform regularly. They like that they can manage data security and student safety risks from a single, easy-to-use platform. Knowing there is a tool monitoring their Google Workspace environment 24/7 has given them some peace of mind.
“Cloud Monitor has given us less anxiety knowing we are going to get alerted to specific data security and student safety risks, including data compliance, compromised accounts, phishing emails, and inappropriate content,” he said. “Cloud Monitor is the missing piece we didn’t have that safeguards our environment and saves us time. If you don’t have a tool like Cloud Monitor, you’re a sitting duck.”
Want to learn more about improving your district’s cybersecurity, student safety, and classroom engagement?
Get started with your free Google Workspace and/or Microsoft 365 security and safety audit today.
