The Holmesglen Institute of TAFE has ditched its outsourcing provider and is relying on inhouse IT security capabilities to protect its distributed campus across two states.

In addition to insourcing, Victoria's largest education institute consolidated its single points products into one solution deploying multi-threat appliances that are expects to save $1.5 million in network security over a three year period.

The campus is spread across Victoria and South Australia with Fortinet's FortiGate multi-threat security appliances protecting a total of 55,000 faculty, staff and students.

With a relatively small information technology team, the institute's technical services division manager, Rosemary Burns, said the multi-threat appliances help manage time, skills and on-going costs more effectively.

In the past, technology firewall services at Holmesglen Institute were handled by a technology outsourcing provider which led to significant delays whenever security settings needed to be changed.

However, the institute did not want to disclose details of its previous provider due to problems experienced during the life of the contract.

"Due to the high volume of regular configuration changes needed to support the large student population, the outsourcing arrangement generated high ongoing costs," Burns said.

"As a result, Holmesglen Institute decided to move critical security functions in-house, and look for a new network security solution that would provide more control over the network."

After a thorough review of vendors, Holmesglen selected the Fortinet FortiGate-3810 unified threat management solution.

"Fortinet has allowed us to bring our network security services in-house rather than spending money for an outsourced vendor to manage the network," she said. "This means substantial budget savings by integrating multiple security functions into the one appliance.

"The $1.5 million savings will be achieved by reducing costs associated with outsourcing agreements, savings on equipment costs and software licenses, and reduced ongoing support costs."

Centrally located at the Chadstone campus, the appliance provides firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention and Web content filtering protection for the entire campus network.

FortiAnalyzer has also been deployed at the Chadstone site to provide integrated analysis and reporting. It is designed to simplify and centralise the collection and analysis of log and event data from each security appliance.