Endpoint Management, Security, and Encryption

Executive Summary

Overview
The Lone Star College System is a publicly funded community college system that serves the north and northwestern parts of Greater Houston,Texas. With 14 locations, Lone Star is the largest institution of higher education in the Houston area, and the fastest growing in Texas. For the fall semester of 2010, 69,339 full-time credit students and more than 20,000 non-credit and continuing education students are attending classes.

Barriers
Lone Star’s student population has been growing over the last decade, straining the college system’s information technology (IT) infrastructure. The Office of Technology Services must maximize the productivity of its 152-person staff while keeping operating expenses in check. Security is a top concern: mobile workers travel with laptops that carry personal information about students and staff, which means the IT team must protect against information disclosure through laptop loss or theft. The institution’s strong commitment to environmental responsibility also means that IT must reduce power consumption—especially cooling usage— as much as possible without impacting IT service delivery. To address these challenges, the Lone Star IT team needs to maximize the value of its capital investments while keeping operating costs low.

The Solution
In March 2009, Lone Star’s IT team began a rollout of Symantec products across its 14 locations. To address key endpoint and inventory challenges, Lone Star began deployment of Altiris IT Management Suite from Symantec, which consists of Altiris Client Management Suite,Altiris Asset Management Suite, and Altiris Server Management Suite. Symantec Endpoint Protection, which took the place of a legacy product, is defending Lone Star’s laptops and desktops from a variety of threats. To protect against information loss, Lone Star deployed Symantec Endpoint Encryption on staff laptops. Symantec Consulting Services assisted Lone Star’s IT team in developing requirements and Symantec Education Services is providing ongoing training and professional development to Lone Star’s IT staff.

Benefits
A Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEI™) analysis by Alchemy Group found that Symantec software and services delivered tangible business value for the Lone Star College System. Actual and projected savings totaled more than $2.7 million for the period from March 2009 through December 2011 (Chart 1). The majority of the savings are due to labor productivity gains that can be attributed to the Symantec solutions.

This TOEI™ was jointly developed by senior IT executives at Lone Star and Alchemy Group. To ensure the integrity of this analysis, the assumptions and formulas were audited by an independent finance and accounting firm.

For more information on Alchemy Group or to download this document, go to http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/