Students, administrators and faculty alike are using a wider variety of computers and devices than ever before to get their work done. That means more endpoints to manage, secure and update across campus systems. And as with many tasks in higher education, it also means you’ve got to do all this with a limited budget and small IT team — and without affecting productivity.
If your IT department is like most in educational institutions, you take care of all your big software updates and computer reimaging projects during the summer months when students and faculty are away. Once summer sessions are over, you have to jump in and work long hours to get all devices and systems ready before the new school year begins.
Security is also a key concern at educational institutions. Cybercriminals now frequently target universities because their networks contain lots of personal information. And all the different endpoints, including smartphones, laptops, tablets and other technologies, connecting to campus networks create vulnerabilities that you’ve got to keep track of. According to EdTech magazine , education is now the third-most-targeted sector, after healthcare and finance.
One way to mitigate some of the risks and to help with the end-of-summer IT rush is to automate some of your endpoint management tasks. Quest KACE offers a unified solution to reduce IT complexity and help you stay ahead of the game, instead of always rushing to catch up.
With KACE, you can automate your summer reimaging project, as well as critical year-round tasks such as inventory management, antivirus deployment, patch management and vulnerability scanning — all across thousands of endpoints.
Another great thing about KACE is that it simplifies both the upfront enrollment of users and ongoing administration. The enrollment is a one-time process that records the type of device and whether it’s university- or user-owned. For ongoing administration, you no longer have to bounce around from tool to tool but can keep track of all devices through a single dashboard. So you’re reducing IT admin complexity, safeguarding your network and reclaiming lost time all at once.
