Secure schooling for unlimited learning

About the client

St Peter’s School is an independent, leading day and boarding co-educational school for 1,200 children aged 2 to 18 based in York, UK.

It is the fourth oldest school globally, having been founded in 627AD and counts Guy Fawkes as one of its past pupils. It was named the TES Pre-Prep and Independent School of the Year 2021 and the Sunday Times North Independent Secondary School of the Year in 2019. The school’s vision combines a classical, high-quality, all-around education with a forward-looking and exciting approach to learning.

The challenge

A few years ago, St Peter’s School recognized the need to invest in its IT infrastructure to ensure a top-of-the-range learning experience for pupils. But like all schools, this required careful planning to ensure any investment was well spent. It had a small IT team responsible for an extensive modernization project, including replacing its entire physical backbone and implementing a new network.

During the pandemic, all staff and pupils used Microsoft 365 primarily for email and Teams, enabling remote learning. SoftwareOne had just been engaged with St Peter’s to advise how best to use the Microsoft 365 suite when a phishing attack hit the school.

SoftwareOne immediately helped St Peter’s identify email accounts affected by the breach and remediated these swiftly. The team also completed a review of the school’s existing Microsoft 365 security position and identified several areas in need of modernization, particularly around identity and access management.

Due to a complex combination of legacy Office licenses and Microsoft 365 A1 licenses, it was a challenge for the IT team to do a forensic analysis of the phishing attack on its own. It also had limited security controls in its existing licensing plan and internal knowledge around the advanced security capabilities of Microsoft 365.

The solution

St Peter’s moved 1,200 student and 500 staff licenses to SoftwareOne’s 365Simple managed service with Microsoft 365 A5. This unlocked best-in-class security features available for the school’s cloud environment. At the same time, the managed service ensures that the IT team has complete visibility and management of its software licenses plus improved support.

SoftwareOne is also working with St Peter’s as a technical design authority partner, creating the proper security controls for its environment and rapidly taking steps towards a zero-trust model, including:

• Removing on-premises identity infrastructure reliance for cloud resources, utilizing Intune for device management and Azure AD for identity and access management
• Implementing machine learning based EDR for its endpoints using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
• Implementing automation around user behavior utilizing Cloud App Security and Defender for Identity
• Creating access policies that fit the school’s requirements using Conditional Access