Catholic Education South Australia provisions scalable and secure applications with F5 Networks

Deploys F5 BIG-IP solutions to securely deliver optimised applications on demand to schools and students

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, December 21, 2015 – F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced that Catholic Education South Australia (CESA), the parent body that directs policy development for Catholic schools in South Australia, has created intelligent and agile infrastructure to securely deliver optimised applications to its stakeholders with F5’s advanced Application Delivery Controller (ADC).

CESA works in partnership with Catholic schools across South Australia to provide a range of facilities and resources to support Catholic education and families. The focus is to promote excellence in teaching and learning for the 6,000 staff and 49,000 students across 103 Catholic schools.

Following the successful deployment of BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Access Policy Manager (APM) modules on its BIG-IP platform, which enables CESA to scale applications to meet significant demands from schools and students with greater agility, the organisation next pursued a solution that would provide sophisticated application level protection as it became more application-centric.

Simon Sigré, Senior Network Engineer at CESA explained, “Our biggest challenge early on, as we started delivering more and more applications to schools, was scale. With over 98 schools connected to our wide area network, the aim was no longer how to get the customer to connect fast, it was around how we could serve content and provision new services faster. Traditional methods simply didn’t scale and we couldn't keep up. We needed a customisable framework for deploying applications and automating tasks.

Most recently, CESA added BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM) to provide application layer security to protect its vital educational assets, as well as the applications and content being continuously published. The deployment of the module was seamless and allowed CESA to wrap a security layer around all of its services in a way that traditional firewall solutions could not.

On choosing to add application layer security, Simon commented, “ASM gave us that extra advantage, where we were able to build some high level templates that matched the base technologies in use and then start customising to accommodate the subtle differences of each new service. Specifically, ASM allowed us to tailor security profiles to fit like a glove and therefore wrap seamlessly around every application. It also gave us a level of assurance that all our applications are delivered in a secure manner”.

About F5

F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) makes apps go faster, smarter, and safer for the world’s largest businesses, service providers, governments, and consumer brands. F5 delivers cloud and security solutions that enable organizations to embrace the application infrastructure they choose without sacrificing speed and control. For more information, go to f5.com. You can also follow @f5networks on Twitter or visit us on LinkedIn and Facebook for more information about F5, its partners, and technologies.

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