Higher Education institutions face tough questions. Money is tight and students expect a transformation in the way they learn, socialise and live, in essence a seamless student experience. They’re looking to make their engagement with faculty just as fast and frictionless as their interactions with social platforms in their halls of residence. Many colleges and universities are finding answers to those challenges by deploying innovative network strategies for today’s and tomorrow’s connected world.
Here are three of the biggest challenges for Higher Education, and the ways in which a secure and stable network infrastructure can give you confidence for the future:
Authored by Gísli Helgason CTO Office – Chief Technologist, Network & Security
There’s a lot of talk these days about student experience. While its crucial of course to understand how today’s students study, communicate and collaborate, sometimes it’s reliable connectivity that counts most.
According to Mark Bramwell, CIO of Said Business School: “I’ve done my job if students aren’t coming to complain about technology. If they can’t connect, if Wi-Fi is poor, if there are too many disparate systems, we’re not performing properly. Having a stable, scalable, secure network as we moved to online teaching was key for us.”
So wireless connectivity is a cornerstone of network design in today’s Higher Education institutions, enabling mobility, flexibility, and scalability. New wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi 6E and 7 support additional spectrum to ensure high-speed, low-latency connections to prepare the future for tomorrow’s students.
As cyberattacks become more sophisticated, Higher Education institutions are increasingly vulnerable to access breaches and ransomware attacks. Colleges and universities need to employ advanced measures such as Zero-Trust architectures, end-to-end encryption, and real-time threat detection to combat them.
A trusted network partner will help to identify the unique security challenges within Higher Education and align you with a Zero-Trust strategy that enables secure connectivity, streamlined management, and enhanced threat protection.
Knowing exactly what’s happening within your network infrastructure at any given time is key to maintaining control. CAE’s Network Intelligence software provides colleges and universities with detailed data and insights, so that the inhouse team has all the up-to-date information needed to optimise performance, efficiency and security.
Coleg Cambria, a Welsh multi-site college supporting a range of student courses is typical of an organisation that benefits from CAE’s Network Intelligence. After announcing its merger with another college, bringing multiple systems across multiple sites into one, the college needed an experienced technology partner that could support them to deliver success.
Coleg Cambria has complete visibility of its network across its whole campus in real-time via a single lens dashboard through Network Analysis. That insight helps ensure a seamless student experience runs smoothly at any time.