OVERVIEW

With 13 schools and nearly 9,000 students, DeKalb Country Schools District prides itself on being a hub for educational excellence—and a pillar of its community. Local resident, Jimmy Benefield, who took over the role of technology coordinator in 2020, sees a personal side to this mission. “Being entrusted with servicing and maintaining all of our campuses, the network, and the computer infrastructure here with the school system, it’s like I’m able to give back to the community I grew up in,” says Benefield. He relies on Trend Vision One™ to keep the district’s students, teachers, administration, and staff secure from cyber threats.

WHY TREND

Faced with a need to increase protection on the network when he came on board in 2020, Benefield chose Trend to secure the district’s servers. “When DeKalb County Schools District experienced a ransomware attack on our computers seven months after our purchase, our Trend deployment was the game-changer in keeping the servers protected. The Trend team was with us every step of the way during the rebuild and recovery,” says Benefield.

SOLUTION

“We added Trend Vision One™ – XDR for Endpoints and Workloads after the incident to give us visibility over our network. The addition of XDR for Endpoints and Workloads helped us to discover machines that were still infected, which saved us considerable time getting those devices sent back to our district office so we could clean, protect, and return them to users.”

The district now enjoys the complete security of Trend Vision One. “Seeing the complete picture with Trend Vision One—from servers, cloud, and network to endpoints and email—is crucial to maintaining a healthy network. Having full visibility and access to all of this information in one portal really saves time,” says Benefield.

RESULTS

DeKalb County Schools District has experienced a transformation since beginning its partnership with Trend. “Trend Vision One has streamlined monitoring and provided a single interface to manage our district’s servers, cloud, email, network, and endpoints,” says Benefield. “We’ve saved valuable time, allowing my small team to focus on critical tasks, ensuring systems are up and running seamlessly.”

Benefield especially praises the Trend network security solutions. “With Trend Vision One™ – TippingPoint™, the geo block feature allows us to see on the dashboard how many attacks we are blocking hourly from other countries, and it is continuously scanning for weaknesses and vulnerabilities. We’re lucky to have TippingPoint up and running to manage those threats,” he says.

“The Trend Vision One™ – XDR for Email notifications have also become a critical feature, alerting our team to security risks and prompting rapid responses and investigations. With enhanced visibility into the network and ongoing reporting, we have successfully overseen the elimination of older device operating systems and can help my team to better prioritize and keep operations running smoothly,” says Benefield.

WHAT'S NEXT

DeKalb County Schools District is proactively bolstering security measures by focusing on training and awareness. “I’d like to make our staff and students more knowledgeable about potential attacks and ways to avoid them—not just to secure our network but to provide them with insight to reduce the chances of being taken advantage of at home,” says Benefield.

“I’m excited to use Trend Vision One to run phishing campaigns that aid in staff training,” says Benefield. As the digital landscape evolves, with the support of Trend, Benefield and his team are set to address these security concerns head‑on, fostering a safer digital environment. “Peace of mind and sleeping soundly is what I am now able to do with Trend Vison One in place. The Trend security solutions and team cover me and life is more peaceful.”