Secure User Networks Power the Niagara College Experience

How the College future-proofed its campus network with seamless segmentation and better security.

There are some parts of the college experience that should be universal.

From suddenly missing your mom’s cooking and fighting for good parking, to procrastinating on laundry and dreading that one professor whose class is famously challenging, some classic experiences unify students. And unfortunately, the flat user network far too many colleges and universities face can have very real impacts on student learning and information security.

Niagara College was bold enough to imagine a better user network—one with seamless, dynamic flexibility and a strong cybersecurity posture to serve its nearly 13,000 students.

For Chad Cupola, a network analyst with Niagara College, this project was an opportunity to leverage Extreme Networks Fabric Connect to create the seamless, segmented, and secure user network he knew students would need as the college grew across two campuses in Welland and Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

The Networking “Before” at Niagara

“What we had prior to Extreme was basically a flat user network,” said Cupola of the starting point. “All the clients could basically route to all the clients, which really didn’t help my sleeping habits.”

Cybersecurity was a key stressor for Cupola and his team with the network “before.”

“Seeing more threat actors targeting institutions like ours in the last few years was a real indicator that we needed to do something to secure the entire network,” he said. Cupola knew that user segmentation, visibility, and easy issue resolution would be key drivers for the project—as well as getting the entire thing approved.

“We had support from many on our IT management team, so the next step was getting buy-in from our end users, like staff, faculty and other IT personnel within other departments,” he said of the first spreadsheet of items and the investment needed. Thanks to the involvement of John Levay, Chief Information Officer at Niagara College who was instrumental in championing the project, Cupola’s initial proposal was granted full budgetary backing and approval.

“Let’s just say my life changed that day,” he joked of getting the go-ahead. “But I knew the effort on the front end would pay dividends later when we had a better network infrastructure.”

Building a Whole New Approach

As the project kicked off, Cupola focused on a key objective: user segmentation on a whole new level.

“We wanted of course to segment staff from students,” he said, leaning on Fabric Connect to help him achieve that. “But also, to create better security and segmentation—to get to that micro-segmentation posture—across departments and roles.”

For Cupola, the goal was to dynamically program segmentation down to the switch.

“We did have devices manually segmented, but with the push of the user segmentation project, we decided to make VLAN assignment more automatic through authentication,” he said. That would mean unifying the IT personnel about what the new approach would look like.

“People are hesitant about change,” he said of the pre-switchover process. “But once they saw how their department could go anywhere on campus, plug in and have a consistent user experience, they were on board.”

Structuring the revamped network included a major Active Directory clean-up of the computer OUs, along with ensuring that authentication was properly set up for all staff. As the switchover began, Cupola said, the team was able to maximize their time spent during the day on installations. They would perform the cutovers at night when there would be minimal impacts to class time and student activities.

“Fabric Connect made the infrastructure scalable to have automatic VLAN assignment anywhere on campus, without any additional uplink or downlink programming,” Cupola said of the change. “Now, my switch dynamically programs what VLAN corresponds with the correct department.”

Minimal Restructuring, Major Improvements

“Yes, it was a year-long project, but I want to say it took about a week of effort to restructure computer OUs properly. After that, it was just programming the RADIUS attributes” said Cupola of the quick ramp up. This provided a sharp contrast to previous solutions and sites he’d worked on, where heavily manual programming of the network gear was an exhaustive part of the project.

For Cupola, he threw out the “old way” quickly as his team built a hyper segmentation approach with department-by-department zones. With no manual work weighing on them, they were quickly able to realize immediate benefits and changes in network performance, security, and visibility.

“Now, when somebody in HR travels from one campus to the other, they plug their laptop in and get the exact same network settings and access they had at the other campus or at home.”

The Right Network for Today—and Tomorrow

Today, Cupola and his team at Niagara College have moved past the initial technical learning curve and into the era of enjoying the day-to-day and operational benefits of a project they worked hard to complete.

“The technology just works,” Cupola said. “Every switch, every device, it’s seamless.” This has also created a huge reduction in complication for Cupola and his team.

“Due to port standardization, there’s a huge reduction of complication in that it’s now ‘plug and go,’ and staff don’t have to reach out to us for support nearly as much. Every port on campus is programmed the exact same way,” he said of the change in the network. “It’s very self-service now.”

From troubleshooting to looking up logs, Niagara now has greater visibility across the network. And with cybersecurity still a pressing challenge for many campus environments, Cupola says that the new hyper segmented approach has greatly improved those sleeping habits he was previously facing.

“If something implodes in X department, it stays within that security level of that specific department. It won’t go over into other areas like finance, HR, or into student records,” he said. “It minimizes the impact of any potential disaster, and that’s huge for peace of mind.”

“User subnets weren’t secure before and weren’t performing in a way that was sustainable for the staff or the students,” he concludes of the year-long, extensive project that has dynamically changed technology on Niagara College’s two campuses. “Before user segmentation, it was very old school. Now, we have amazing security, and our staff and students can plug in anywhere and have the right level of access.”

It’s a switch Cupola sees more colleges making in the years ahead, as student populations grow and cyberthreats expand right along with them.

“Extreme’s technology speaks for itself,” he said. “It was time to secure a better network for Niagara College, and Extreme delivered on this project.”

Ready to learn more? Download the overview of our solutions for Higher Education to learn more about how Extreme Networks was a game changer for Niagara College.