Case study - Verkeersschool Kees van Iersel

Verkeersschool Kees van Iersel operates from two locations in The Netherlands providing traffic courses for people to pass their driving test. The driving school prides itself on developing unique training material for these courses. With 10 to 15 freelancers responsible for delivering these courses Kees van Iersel needed a solution that would prevent instructors from taking this material and using it at other schools, something that had occurred in the past. They recruited the services of Dotcombusiness to recommend suitable security software to address this matter and were advised to install GFI EndPointSecurity.

Challenges

Verkeersschool Kees van Iersel spends its time and money on creating useful resources for its freelance instructors to use during traffic lessons; however, because these materials are readily available on their public computers they faced situations where these materials were copied without permission and used by instructors at competitor schools.

Kees van Iersel's materials and presentations form the basis of the way the school educates students and are a part of the methodology that the driving school uses to help a high percentage of students pass their tests.

Kees van Iersel is partly dependant on 10 to 15 freelancers to run its courses and it needed a way to prevent these freelancers from using the company's in-house materials when teaching at other driving schools. There were known examples of this happening and Kees van Iersel wanted to control this.

The increase in the use of portable storage devices such as USB stick, PDAs, iPods and flash drives has made it extremely easy for individuals to copy data from a computer onto a device. Unless controlled, important and confidential data could be taken with little effort. Kees van lersel quickly read the situation after their intellectual property was used in other schools and sought to a remedy whereby they could implement a system where permission is needed for portable devices to be used on their computers. This would give Kees van Iersel comprehensive control over who was using their computers and also monitor the use of portable devices on their network.

"We use about 35 presentations for all the courses that we provide and keep these up to date all the time, which is very time consuming as there are frequent changes to the law and regulations We should be the only ones to benefit from our investment, not other traffic schools," said Herman Roelofs from Kees van Iersel.

Implementation

In trying to solve the issue Kees van Iersel contacted IT consultants and business solution providers Dotcombusiness, to take a look at possible security measures. The IT solution provider went through an evaluation process and then advised them to install GFI EndpointSecurity on all desktops and laptops. Kees van Iersel did a small pilot first and subsequently rolled out the software on the PCs in 15 classrooms across their locations of Tilburg and Heesch.

GFI EndPointSecurity offers network-wide control of data flow via portable storage devices, thus preventing users from taking confidential data or even introducing viruses and Trojans to the network.

"The product is easy to install and to maintain on the devices. Users only have to click on a link on the desktop to access the protected environment," commented Mr. Roelofs. "Users and instructors understand why we had to put GFI EndpointSecurity in place and agree with our position."

GFI's EndPointSecurity helped Kees van Iersel to address their security issue from a management perspective because: the instructor can log in with an account and password; the instructor cannot add anything to the server or copy anything from the server, and the USB and CD/DVD driver still remain usable to read and use the data that add value to the course and set Kees van Iersel apart from other traffic schools.

Moreover, it also proved to be beneficial from a financial perspective since each year, Kees van Iersel invests a lot of time to update and develop course materials and by protecting this intellectual property the knowledge is kept in-house.

Benefits

"GFI helps us protect our intellectual property, which is a differentiating factor that sets us apart from other traffic schools," said Mr. Roelofs.

Target reached

The implementation of GFI EndPointSecurity proved to be a beneficial addition for Verkeersschool Kees van Iersel as it helped them protect their copyright material that is available for use by freelance instructors and students. Since significant time and money is invested in maintaining and updating these resources, the security offered by GFI's software meant that Kees van Iersel was safe-guarding its finances as well as its materials.

Links

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