The College

With a worldwide reputation for innovative thought and practice, Regent College was the first graduate school of theology in North America to make education of the laity – anyone not training for the professional ministry – its central focus. Founded in 1968 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and affiliated with the University of British Columbia, Regent College attracts over 600 full-time and part-time students from over 40 countries representing more than 30 denominations.

IT Director Cam Tucker works with a team of three to manage IT and security operations for the college’s faculty, staff, and students. His team manages more than 130 workstations. “Regent College offers a truly special environment for international students and is one of the few theology colleges that offers sessions during the spring and summer breaks. This keeps our IT team busy throughout the year.”

The Challenge

For Cam, preventing ransomware – particularly CryptoLocker – is the college’s top security challenge. “With crypto-locking ransomware still targeting a number of universities and holding sensitive data for ransom, we need to find ways to effectively prevent it, or in worst case, survive it,” he says. “Cybercriminals can fool end-users into clicking on a suspicious link but with advanced security, we have a better chance of monitoring and blocking any suspicious activity in advance.”

The Solution

With CryptoLocker incidents on the rise, it was a good time for the college to upgrade from its free version of Avast Antivirus to a more comprehensive security solution. Cam chose Avast Business Antivirus and the company’s cloud-based Management Console.

“Fortunately, we have never had a CryptoLocker incident, but we know it’s more critical than ever to have advanced protection in place,” explains Cam. “We have always liked the range of features in the free Avast Antivirus software and the business version has continued to receive excellent scores and reviews for malware detection, so the decision to transition to Avast Business Antivirus made a lot of sense.”

After deploying the software, the team gained better confidence that threats were being detected and blocked. “We especially like the software’s Behavior Shield feature as it was developed specifically to identify and block ransomware,” says Cam. “This gives us the assurance we are protected.”

The Results

For Cam, the software’s ability to monitor and block ransomware and other vicious cyberthreats has delivered a clear advantage. He also estimates that his team has improved efficiencies as the software has been very easy to deploy and manage using the cloud console.

“We have improved ransomware detection as well as the ability to monitor threats as they happen with new technologies like Behavior Shield. This gives us the ongoing confidence that we are staying one step ahead of cybercriminals. We are very happy with the upgrade,” shares Cam.