Employment and training firm CVGT has installed a network management toolkit to enforce compliance and protect the financial and personal data of its 40,000-plus apprentices and trainees.

The company provides training and employment services to New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania and has 300 staff across 25 locations.

CVGT IT director Peter Richards said it implemented a new network management solution to monitor compliance and security, following large upgrades to its e-commerce, business process systems and construction of a new data centre.

"New employees undertake computer security awareness during their induction process and we have a policy that is tolerant and flexible," Richards said.

"We update and service our employees on a face-to-face basis [because] our users' satisfaction has increased significantly whenever they can associate a human face with IT.

"We encourage a culture of security and our IT team maintains an open-door policy for any questions where a user is not sure of the process."

The network console works in conjunction with security end point tools to monitor the company's 350 Windows XP desktops and laptops and Windows 2003 servers.

Richards said educating users on security is the most important part of compliance, but said policy updates can be pushed out to users through the management console.

He said the Sophos solutions, including the network console and an antivirus interface, have worked without fault and notify IT immediately of computers in breach of policy.