Case Study

Hutto Independent School District

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How Hutto ISD used hybrid filtering to protect student devices at school and home

Meet Hutto ISD

Located amid a high-tech industry hub in Central Texas, Hutto Independent School District (Hutto ISD) holds a strong track record of academic achievement and growth.

Over the course of 15 years, enrollment in the district increased from just over 1,000 students in one K-12 campus to more than 9,646 students across twelve campuses.

Starting in the 2020-21 school year, Hutto ISD implemented a 1:1 student device program for middle school and high school students—as part of the commitment to create world-class problem solvers and 21st-century learners.

“Linewize jumped out at me while I was at TCEA because of how their approach to content filtering differed from their competitors.”

Keith Reynolds
Senior Network Administrator

Summary

District Name: 
Hutto Independent School District

Enrollment: 
10,000+

Schools:
7 Elementary Schools
2 Middle Schools
1 Ninth Grade Center
1 High School
1 High School of Choice (River Horse Academy)
1 Virtual 6th-12th Grade School

1:1 Program:
Middle-High School: Chromebooks

Linewize Solutions:
 Filter

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The challenge: An outdated filtering solution

Hutto ISD’s previous content filter was a legacy hardware-based solution. With a lack of SSL decryption and no way to filter devices off-site, the district struggled to achieve the visibility, granularity, and control they needed to keep students safe on their school-issued devices.

The technology team could not accurately report to non-technical administrators and did not have a take-home solution. However, they didn’t want to manage multiple solutions to achieve both on-site and off-site filter coverage.

“During the proof of concept, we didn’t even need to mess with our current content filter. Linewize came in as another layer and didn’t conflict at all.” 

Keith Reynolds
Senior Network Administrator

The solution: Hybrid filtering with Linewize

Hutto ISD decided to test Linewize’s hybrid filter after seeing a demo at the TCEA tradeshow.

Linewize Filter combines both cloud and on-premise filtering with a gateway appliance, to give K-12 districts the best of both—without the drawbacks of either method.

Hutto ISD started with a proof of concept (POC) deployment for one school campus. Soon after launching their filter POC, the COVID-19 pandemic forced US school districts to shut down, and the district suddenly needed to send 3,500 devices home with students.

Linewize was able to filter all of the take-home devices within minutes.

Hutto ISD decided to send home 1:1 devices for their middle school and high school students the very next school year, knowing that Linewize would make it an easy transition.

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The outcome: Greater visibility, on and off school network

Linewize Filter’s hybrid approach provides Hutto ISD with the ability to filter devices both on and off the school network seamlessly. As a result, the IT team is now also able to provide clear and simplified reporting to non-technical district admins.

“I like how Linewize operates off of metadata communicated between an agent and a policy/reporting server, and allows the agent on the device to handle the filtering.”

Keith Reynolds
Senior Network Administrator

“Another constant pain point was SSL interception," Reynolds explains. "Deploying certificates and man-in-the-middle intercepting traffic had always caused problems in the past. Linewize Filter observes the browsing at a level where you don’t even have to mess with the SSL session, which is a much simpler way to handle the problem.”

With proper SSL decryption and hybrid filtering, the district has achieved protection of student devices, with granular visibility into their traffic and user behavior.

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Get the PDF version of Hutto ISD's success story using Linewize Filter.

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US-Case-Study_Filter_Hutto (1).pdf

 

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