4-page Case Study - Posted 5/29/2009

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Edinburgh Napier University

University Uses Hosted Filtering Solution to Reduce Spam by 85 Percent

Edinburgh Napier University wanted to improve its system of filtering e-mail messages. The university’s IT staff were creating manual rules to block spam, an effort that generated too many false positives and was not the most productive use of their time. A software upgrade would have required capital expenditures for associated new hardware. So Edinburgh Napier signed up to filter e-mail messages through Microsoft® Forefront™ Online Security for Exchange. Employees continue to access e-mail messages as they did before; for students, the service is combined with the Microsoft Live@edu suite of online applications. The university has reduced spam by 85 percent and completely eliminated false positives. It has also lowered the administrative burden for IT staff by 93 percent. The system was flexible, easy to deploy, and did not require any additional investment of capital.

Situation

Edinburgh Napier University educates 14,400 students at eight campuses, with most of its locations in Edinburgh, Scotland, and international offices in China and Malaysia. Edinburgh Napier was founded in 1964, first as a college, later as a polytechnic; it achieved full university status in 1992. In order to achieve its objective of being perceived as the best modern university in Scotland by 2010, the university declares: “We will deliver what our customers want, in accessible, flexible, and creative ways, inspiring confidence in our students, staff and with the employers and communities we serve, both home and abroad.” It has 1,867 employees.

Where our users formerly received on average 10 spam messages per day, with Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange they receive 5 to 10 per week.  Scott Walkingshaw Lead IT Developer (Servers) Edinburgh Napier University

As spam proliferated, university staff started manually creating mail policies to block it. Many users forwarded their junk mail to the IT support desk, which had a policy of logging each message as a call and treating it as an action item. “Sometimes we’d get an average of 16 calls a day,” Walkingshaw recalls.

Furthermore, the policies—internally referred to as manual rules—that arose out of these calls often generated “false positives,” where legitimate e-mail messages were identified as spam. IT staff would then spend additional hours unblocking the false-positive messages. Walkingshaw says, “It took approximately three staff hours a week.”

He knew that new antispam system software could probably handle the situation, but upgrading the software would have also required new server hardware. The IT department would have had to purchase three new servers for two sites, with additional expenditures for complementary technologies. The cost could have been high.

Instead Edinburgh Napier decided to find a different approach to filtering unwanted e-mail messages—a solution that would not require new capital expenditures for hardware and would also free up staff time.

Solution

Edinburgh Napier became interested in the managed service model, which is designed to remove unwanted incoming e-mail messages and threats before they reach an organization’s computers by routing them through an offsite service. Edinburgh Napier investigated other services but selected the filtering service from Microsoft® Forefront™ Online Security for Exchange (then called Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering).

“We were intrigued because the service would provide us with best value from our existing campus license agreement with Microsoft,” Walkingshaw says. “We signed up for a trial and had several calls with Microsoft to understand how the system worked, and how we could make sure that our users would not see a significant change. The service quality had to meet our requirements and be at least as good as what we had previously.”

The test proved successful. Walkingshaw says, “Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange uses multiple antivirus engines, so even if one fails to update, another is going to catch the virus before it would ever get to us.” Edinburgh Napier finalized its decision in June 2008 and went live with Forefront Online Security for Exchange in early July.

Now Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange routes all of the university’s incoming e-mail messages (about 515,000 per month) through the Microsoft global data-center network. Messages that are flagged as spam can be quarantined for up to 15 days or sent to a specific user’s mailbox for review.

Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange uses multiple antivirus engines, so even if one fails to update, another is going to catch the virus before it would ever get to us.  Scott Walkingshaw Lead IT Developer (Servers) Edinburgh Napier University

For students, the virtual domains feature of Forefront Online Security for Exchange routes messages to the Microsoft Live@edu suite of online applications. Live@edu provides students with e-mail messaging, shared workspaces, and other applications to aid in educational collaboration.

Filtering through Forefront Online Security for Exchange is one of the several hosted services offered by Microsoft Online Services. Additional services offered include: archiving, to store e-mail and instant messages that help companies meet legal and regulatory requirements; continuity, to store a month’s worth of e-mail messages that can be accessed during a planned or unplanned outage; and encryption, to provide policy-based message encryption from sender to recipient.

Edinburgh Napier is considering future implementation of the encryption service for a handful of staff members who can use it to do their jobs more efficiently. Walkingshaw says, “Having worked on encryption systems in the past myself, I know how difficult they are, and this option is very attractive to me.”

Benefits

Edinburgh Napier has achieved its goals of reducing spam and false positives—while easing the administrative burden on the IT staff—by implementing the low-cost, flexible, easy-to-implement Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange solution.

85 Percent Reduction in Spam

The system has dramatically reduced spam for e-mail users at the university. “Where our users formerly received on average 10 spam messages per day, with Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange they receive 5 to 10 per week,” says Walkingshaw.

Not only is the system blocking more unwanted e-mail messages, it is also letting through more of the messages that users want to see. False positives have dropped from about three per day to zero.

“When the system first went in, we got several comments from users about how happy they were at the reduction in spam,” says Walkingshaw. “Obviously, it has to be improving their productivity to not waste time with unwanted e-mail messages.”

Choice and Flexibility

Edinburgh Napier is able to mix and match its on-premises and online services to best address its particular needs. It can offer staff messaging through Exchange Server 2007 and Forefront Online Security for Exchange, which provides them with the robustness and flexibility of the Office Outlook 2007 software and Office Outlook Web Access technology.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh Napier can choose to offer students—who have a different set of needs and work habits—the Microsoft Live@edu suite of online applications. Similarly, going forward, Edinburgh Napier may provide the encryption service to the small number of staff members who can take full advantage of it.

93 Percent Decrease in Administrative Burden

The new solution has virtually eliminated the time that staff spends administering the solution. “We used to have an average of 15 support calls per day, but with Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange we now average just one per day,” says Walkingshaw.

But the reduced amount of work does not mean that administrators—or users—have given up control over their e-mail messages. “Users can see what was blocked, if they like,” says Walkingshaw. The increased transparency has gone a long way toward improving trust in the system for the small number of users who had been skeptical about it.

Easy, Inexpensive Deployment

Deployment of the system was easy—similar to flipping a switch to route e-mail messages through the Microsoft server. It also saved the university additional capital expenditures that would have been involved in buying new mail server computers required for an in-house software-based solution.

Because Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange is included in the campus licensing agreement, Edinburgh Napier has gained an effective spam-filtering solution at minimal cost. And by combining Forefront Online Security for Exchange with the Live@edu student collaboration package, it is able to offer its users better service. Such improvements in both efficiency and service help the university achieve its purpose of delivering what its customers want, in accessible, flexible, and creative ways.

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Edinburgh Napier University products and services, call 08452 60 60 40 or visit the Web site at:
www.napier.ac.uk

Microsoft Forefront Product Portfolio

The Microsoft Forefront comprehensive line of business security products provides greater protection and control through integration with your existing IT infrastructure and through simplified deployment, management, and analysis. Forefront is a comprehensive solution that helps provide protection for the client operating system, application servers, and the network edge.

For more information about the Forefront product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/forefront 

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published May 2009