Department for Education (DfE) backs Cisco Umbrella

The Department for Education has just spent £2.8m on Cisco security software to protect the 200,000 laptops and tablets it is providing to children who would otherwise lack access to computing platforms during the Covid-19 crisis.

The DfE states “The contract relates to the provision of an internet content filtering software in order to meet the Department for Education's requirement to limit access to relevant and safe content in the internet for vulnerable and disadvantaged children in England, through devices provided by the Department as part of an initiative to make remote education and social care services accessible for children and young people during the coronavirus outbreak. Schools and local authorities will also have the ability to install their own content filtering set up on devices that best suits their needs.”

So what is Cisco Umbrella?  Here at UCcert our view is that its the first line of defence against threats on the internet.  A piece of cloud-delivered software that protects users, both on and off the network against Malware, Phishing Attacks, Cryptomining, Command and Control and other potentially harmful risks that are prevalent on the internet. 

Our most recent deployment of Umbrella was for a secondary school in London that wanted to secure both school and personal machines that were connecting back into the school network during the Covid-19 outbreak.  This deployment has been extended to over 1,200 endpoints giving the school peace of mind knowing that their student and staff devices are secure.