Leveraging IaaS and Automation to Secure and Streamline School Operations

All right, welcome everyone to another Atlas webinar today.

We are super excited, um, to have this webinar sponsored by our partners at Secure One.

Um, and they have brought in Bob Ogden from the Pinky School to share a little bit about, um, their services and some case studies.

So without further ado, um, thank you so much Secure Walk for your support of our community.

And Bob, take it away.

Hi everybody.

Welcome.

And, uh, yeah, it's great to be together today for the next, uh, hour or 45 minutes or so to kind of talk or to talk about, uh, information as a service and automations.

Um, I thought it was a relevant topic to talk about, so I want to go over just what it means because it's a, been a introduced to me and, and I'm learning as I go to, so I thought it would be a relevant topic for us to talk about.

'cause am I thinking if I'm thinking about it, I know others are as well.

So today I just wanted to go through some things like infrastructure as a service, kind of what does it mean to me and, and what am I seeing in the, in the marketplace, especially going through some projects recently, uh, automation, what are some automation pieces from an infrastructure side, but also a SaaS side as well, and, and kind of working through those things.

And I thought it would be relevant.

Uh, I've been working with Secure One now for a few years to talk about our relationship, kind of how it formed and started, but then also how has it helped me to become a better director here and better serve my community.

Um, and then we'll wrap up with maybe some questions if we have time at the end.

And, uh, Kelsey, and I think feel free to jump on the chat.

I know people are monitoring that.

Kelsey is as well.

So just yep.

Feel free to jump in if there's any questions that come up during the conversation.

Absolutely.

And Bob, I think you dragged your, um, your notes to the other monitor, so I see it.

There you go.

All good.

Perfect.

Alright.

Um, my, it's my first time really using PowerPoint, so bear with me here.

I'm typically a Google Slides person, but I felt like I needed to use PowerPoint here just to kind of brush it up a little bit.

So bear with me guys.

So thanks so much again.

Um, so I guess I was trying to incorporate AI into this a little bit just to kind of keep it funny and relevant.

And, you know, with all the things about ai, I, I didn't really, I'm not really talking about AI a lot, but I figured I'd use AI to kind of generate an image about all the hats that we wear at Pingree or I wear at Pingree, and I'm sure you wear at your schools as well.

So I, I think we're all in the kind of the same boat here.

So Google Gemini with the Nano Nano Pro did.

Its best to kind of give a hard hat image in the server room just to see like, what is this, you know, all about.

Um, so I think it's, it's funny to see like what, what we all do and, and how AI is interpreting how we, how we do this, right? So at any given time, we can be switching hats from installing a network switch to, you know, solving an enrollment issue with the student.

So, uh, or prospective students.

Mm-hmm.

And so why now? Why, why have this conversation now? And I thought it would be good to go through like what is infrastructure as a service, again, meaning to me, and then automation and all those things.

But I know with the increasing complexity of things that are happening in our schools and, uh, with all the systems that we're installing and the maintenance and the maintaining of the patching and servers, and it's just growing in complexity.

And I'll show that later on in this, uh, slideshow as well in this presentation too.

I know with cybersecurity and insurance, um, just the questionnaires that I have to fill out, and I'm sure you have to fill out as well on an annual basis with your insurance companies, with, you know, in partnership with the CFO or your business office.

Um, with our business audit that we do every year, there's increasing questions about, uh, relationships and the money flows and what protections are there as well.

And so there's a lot more demand on us to be vigilant about cybersecurity and, and knowing all those things.

And my team hasn't grown in 16 years since I've been here, right? So I started out as a network administrator, now I'm the director of information systems, but my team hasn't grown.

We have three people, and I'll show that in a later slide as well.

So one full-time help desk and, and a tech educator and myself.

Um, but the pressure is at all time high to kind of be on point every day, all day, a hundred percent reliability, as you know, with the recent outages from the internet, um, with AWS being down a couple, few weeks ago or a couple months ago with CloudFlare being down a couple weeks ago, it feels like we're getting, getting it from all angles.

But, um, the pressure to be up all the time is, is very high.

And then I've seen with the shift of ownership of, of hardware on campus or on my campus, and I know others as well.

And speaking with Wayne about other customers that he's dealing with, dealing with, uh, working with, I should say, what, what constraints are we having and facing and what's, what's on the market now that you can buy or rent or lease, um, as a service versus, you know, maybe five, six years ago you were buying whole wholesale, you know, big project overhauling project.

So what's changing there? Lemme get to my next slide here.

So I've put out a survey, I sent this out to the Atlas, uh, group.

So our ISED, uh, slide, um, mail list listserv here.

And then I also sent it out to Meta, which is our Massachusetts Education Technology Admins Association.

So if you're not from Mass, there's another group.

And they primarily consist of public, it's a mix of public and private, but mainly public schools where Atlas is really focused on independent schools.

But, um, a number of people filled it out.

And I was, uh, really taking, you know, by surprise in a couple of ways, but also not in in some other ways.

But definitely the top operational challenge that I see is budget constraints, right? Uh, the expected benefit, uh, it contradicts with the next slide we'll see, but budget constraints is definitely a high in the list as far as an operational challenge.

How much money is there? I know we're up against it.

We're looking, reading the trend book from NAIS, you see that, you know, enrollment is down or, uh, apps are down in some areas of the country.

So what are we doing it where the spend isn't there to be able to just keep refreshing every four or five years, especially with the increasing cost of equipment, um, and limited staff and resources is, and number, number one, and probably will always be number one.

I know there's some schools that are maybe a little smaller than us, we're about 394 students, but, um, a hundred or so faculty and staff members where there's only maybe a little smaller than us that have like one person managing the whole thing, or two people where there's other schools that have four or five people.

But again, the time that it takes, uh, to manage all the systems that we have, uh, is definitely always a, a suck on time.

Um, and then security and compliance down here is 30%.

I did feel like that was a little low.

Um, as far as an operational challenge, just like I was saying with the increase of questions and, um, compliance issues, and I feel like I'm, I'm trying to see the writing on the wall in the future, reading between the, the lines here a little bit from what they're asking for.

And I do feel like security and being compliant in that is gonna be something that's gonna be a lot stronger, especially from an insurance standpoint where I see that schools are gonna need to prove that they're doing MFA and, uh, have reliant resilient firewalls and policies in place and solutions on their internal servers if they're running internal servers or SOC two on their external cloud servers services as well.

So, and to see that is gonna be a higher challenge at some point in the future.

And what are some of the expected benefits of moving to infrastructure as a service? And so, uh, cost savings, it was not, it was a little bit of a contradiction with, you know, budget constraints and then there was gonna be cost savings down here.

It's, it's cool to see, like, I don't know if there's necessarily a cost savings with moving to I, uh, you know, infrastructure as a service, but there definitely is a cost saving of maybe more of a soft cost versus a hard cost in the savings of there.

And we can get into that a little bit too, but definitely improve security, improve staff efficiency and greater scalability.

I know for us, we we're looking to build or add on with, uh, not necessarily in school size as far as enrollment goes, but definitely when we wanna move some, uh, some build, uh, classrooms around and we're gonna build a new little building.

And so we're just trying to increase the resource centers and classroom space that we have.

So what I'm doing now with currently Wayne and his team is it's scalable and flexible enough to kind of, to adapt to those new spaces.

And I think the answer is yes, but, uh, so what is infrastructure as a service? Uh, in my point of view, I, I think it can be multiple things ranging from a public cloud, so AWS or Google Cloud and, and putting servers onto those systems or utilizing those systems for, um, different things inside of your school.

But also you can move private servers to those spaces or, or even have a dedicated physical server in a rack, but that's on somebody else's space, whether it's a print server or something like that.

Uh, and it's connected through VPN through your firewall or I, I'm seeing now with leasing or, or kind of this network as a service or disaster recovery on campus for a couple of servers that you have on campus and security, right? So I see it in a lot of different ways.

Um, but this is kind of how I'm seeing it as far as the, how the future plays out here.

I know.

Wayne, I just wanted to kick it to you for really quick.

I know you, we talked about, um, a couple of schools that you're working with.

You know, you want to go in and, and tell me how you're seeing inter infrastructure as a service here.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I wanted to mention thanks Bob, and thanks Bob for doing this, by the way.

I know a lot of people could welcome, use, uh, your expertise, so I appreciate it very much.

Uh, I know the Atlas community does as well, but, so yeah, so Cambridge Ellis School is a, is a great new client of ours, and it's, uh, and, and their, their main point of contact on our team is Margaret Cosmic.

And, and which she did a really great job helping them kind of in our journey of, of how we kind of go to market, which is really just doing a security vulnerability assessment first and a Google assessment and figuring out what the actual needs are.

Um, then we helped remediate those needs.

And for Cambridge Ellis specifically, we knew that they needed some cyber, uh, protection on, on all their systems.

They're a super small team, small school, um, needed a lot of help.

And, uh, by implementing these systems, you know, infrastructure as a service is now implemented for their network.

So it's a brand new secure network, uh, wireless and cyber security backed with our, uh, team support.

And the best part for their school was, it was all for one, uh, like one monthly payment per month forever.

So they don't have to worry about capital expenses or having the network go down, uh, you know, when they walk into school in the morning.

'cause they have us protecting their back.

So, um, I know they're super happy and implore people to reach out to 'em for sure.

Yeah, and I think that's the thing I'm gonna touch upon too, as far as like budget constraints and cost savings in regards to like having that monthly or kind of that budget plan in place.

I know with, with me, I meet with my CCFO really often, um, to talk about budget.

I'm one of the larger budgets on campus, and I'm sure you guys are probably similar in that case.

You know, I know facilities is probably number one.

Uh, and then it's, it, those are the two top top dogs in, in regards to budget, uh, suck for, for things that we need to spend.

But the capital outlay every few years for those rotations, for those heavy infrastructure rotations, I, I, I think is gonna be going away in some ways or moving to a different model.

And I think it's gonna be this type of model.

I think a lot of businesses are flexing to that model and wanna be in that model too, just because it is, it's easier for them in some ways because then, you know, they can predict in regards to what the buying is gonna be, what the network is gonna look like, and then adapt into what the most recent equipment should be and will be.

And so legacy systems that might be working and running fine, but you might try to eke out a few more years out of those before you can make the next capital outlay and the CapEx spend there where infrastructure service as a service allows you to be a little bit more nimble and not have to rely upon the car with a hundred thousand miles on it.

That might not start tomorrow.

So, um, I like to do a lot of car analogies by the way.

So, um, and so I, I think the promise of IS right, so ultimately the promise, you know, could be finding like a lot of different ways, but the basic, you know, lies with stability, right? So being stable, like I just said, like waking up and ke it keeps me, uh, more stable as well and not have to re and not have to worry about servers going down or switches going down.

Um, those things would keep me up at night at some times.

I, I know I could tell stories, and I'm sure you guys could tell a lot of stories too, but I remember having to come in with the server room being ultra hot because the AC went down.

I'm getting a notification and running it at midnight or two o'clock in the morning to open up the server room and make sure everything's up and running for school in the morning.

Uh, I know the cybersecurity lift now.

So like lifting that up, um, and making sure that's staying relevant.

Um, and, and scalable too, because I think there's, each of these things can be very, like, you could drill down into them and be, and you have to be an expert in a lot of them.

And, um, you know, I feel like I'm myself, I'm a generalist and I think in a world of specialists out there, or the growing need for specialists, I think it directors and independent schools are generalists.

And that's not something to look down on.

I think it's something applaud and, and look at as a, as a good way.

But again, all of these different things here are promises of, of what it could be.

And so from the survey results, I saw that some current schools, um, have an infrastructure model, either hybrid, primarily in the cloud, which is pretty cool.

I'd love to hear more about how they're using that.

And then there was the, the thing that stood out to me is the 15% of the people were saying that they're fully on-prem, like a hundred percent servers or switches, everything's on-prem.

I'm sure there's like Google or Microsoft 365.

Um, I don't know if how many people are running on campus exchange servers anymore, or first class if, if, for those of you who might remember those, those days on a first class server.

But, um, you know, I want to, I wanted to see what that looks like as well, because I think if I gave this talk another year or two years from now, especially as budgets rotate and legacy systems come offline, the new things that are out there are not gonna fit this model of fully on-prem, um, and how they work that way.

And so I would say it would be maybe a 50 50 split here, or this hybrid model becomes a little bit smaller, or maybe I need to define what, you know, what options to click on as far as, uh, the form goes.

And so, uh, moving from information as a service, I dunno if Kelsey, if there's any questions that are out, were out there for bias.

I'm just gonna move into automation if that's okay.

Okay.

So automation as a, uh, uh, not automation as a service anymore.

It's informa it's infrastructure as a service.

But in regards to automation, I wanted to touch upon this too because I think the two play hand in hand with each other.

And I'm gonna lean on Wayne A.

Little bit here too, to kind of, you know, put some color around what I'm trying to say too.

But I know in regards to me starting, uh, the relationship with Wayne was really with disaster recovery.

And that's really what, where I wanted to start.

Like, what, what does my current model look like? And I'm really struggling with, with on-prem, uh, backups.

That's what I was having.

I had a Sonology box and I had a Veeam server and I was running Veeam and it would fail every now and then.

And I'm just, it was just frustrating and getting it up and running and keeping it going.

And it was just one of those pain points for me that I'd have to wake up.

And literally once every week I was just like, I can't find somebody to solve this.

And so one of my first conversations with Wayne, I think three or four years ago now was, was about disaster recovery.

And so, you know, I wanted to remove that from my list.

So he introduced a Datto, which is now Kaseya, but Datto is a box that is installed on campus and it backs up my VM servers, but it just backs it up.

I can use that one box to spin up a machine if I need to.

His team can tap into it remotely if they need to, to spin up a machine if one goes down.

But also it backs up to the cloud every single night.

And I see that in the internet thing.

So, uh, in the internet traffic overnight, it just spikes at two o'clock in the morning, it just sends everything over to, to Datto does a backup.

And so a bus can hit my server room and I'd be fine up, I'd be up and running for the next day.

Um, which is really great, right? So I just feel like with automation, and one of the first things I ever tried to do at Pingree was automate a lot of things, uh, in my workflows starting in 2010, you know, because it does, you know, reduce the burnout.

It, it, it touches upon all these things, right? So it improves the accuracy, especially of what's going on, especially with onboarding and offboarding folks from HR systems and whatnot.

And so how are we using this? And so, you know, pushing this back, uh, seeing the feedback that came in, um, again, so patching, backups, provisioning number one, that's my number one as well.

That's what I lean on for Secure one, two, and their cybersecurity monitoring alerts.

Those top two things for me as well, um, in regards to, you know, patching.

I'll get an email saying like, we patched these servers, we're gonna reboot them tomorrow night just to make sure that they go through, okay, I'm not releasing Windows patches that are not tested.

'cause his team is testing them and making sure they're working.

And I'm sure there's, um, some patches out there that are failed that they're like, Hey, we can't send this one out yet because it's not working properly.

Microsoft just released this one.

And so, you know, having a a team to be able to, to help with that is really helpful.

Um, and then I've worked in automation now working them with our HR department, but also our finance process as well.

And then our enrollment and admissions like working in those automations.

So as we enroll students and then, and hire and, and, um, and people leave Pingree and, and come into Pingree, especially with basically a hundred new students every year, right? So we roll off a senior class, we welcome a ninth grade class.

And so there's a lot of, uh, kind of trigger brace workflows that happen off of that, uh, that we can do.

And now this past summer, we also integrated our student information system with our learning management system as well.

And So that leads into like our current landscape.

So what, what does Pingry look like? Uh, so like I said before, we're a three person team.

It's me as the director.

Uh, it's, uh, Brandon, who's our, uh, help desk or level one technician.

And then we have Peter, who's our technology educator.

And really, if you wanted to really say it, it's a two person team.

It from a technology stand where I feel like Peter is very forward facing for our student information system there.

And so it's not, um, it's not something where he's troubleshooting network issues.

Like yes, he can and help with that, but he, that's not his primary responsibility.

His primary responsibility is helping teachers work in AI into their curriculum and those types of needs and technology.

Uh, so we have about 1800, actually I looked yesterday, 1900 plus devices on campus.

And the ebb and flow is there from guests and visitors on campus as well.

So as the winter season comes, we have more people on our hockey rink and visiting our campus, uh, for sports and other things.

Uh, so, uh, relying guest on the guest network there, but we also have two VMware hosts hosting six VMs, which is down from 12 two years ago.

Um, and then eventually probably one or two, uh, the next couple of next year or two, uh, as I need to look to replace those.

Um, we just moved to a Meraki firewall, uh, Meraki and FortiGate firewall with ha and then we have two internet connections, all redundant connections from different sides of the buildings and roads and all sorts of stuff.

So trying to mitigate risk as much as possible.

And then we have our data re, um, device on campus as well as our backup.

And then some of the tools that we've been using, um, that are connected to the network.

And the network needs to be up basically a hundred percent of the time because of it.

Zoom phone, we have, uh, algo speakers for our paging, and we have seen them connected to inform cast or single wire.

And then I utilize a tool.

I've been utilizing this tool for a really long time, but better it's become better Cloud.

It used to be something with, uh, Google, like Google Dr.

Google or something like that.

But BetterCloud has been become like my software as a service, uh, automation tool because it links into so many.

So if something happens in Google or if I move a person into a different ou, it then triggers events to then offboard them, change their password, set a auto reply, um, those types of things.

And then we moved with the network project to JumpCloud, and that's been our directory as a service.

So as if you're getting a sense here, everything is as a service now.

Um, our directory, which is great because it's our Radius service, and so that's become our source of truth.

So when I create somebody in JumpCloud it, then they're then pushed down into Microsoft for our licensing there, but also Google and then from Google, they're put into groups automatically and then that triggers other, other things to happen as well.

But Jump Cloud's been really helpful because they have a Radius server that's in the cloud.

I was relying upon ClearPass in the past to do that, and that was a single server connected to our Aruba network, and that was a single point of failure.

I was trying to eliminate all these single points of failure.

And so now I have redundant Radius Cloud servers that they're pushing back a group, uh, that this person is in, whether, so if they're a student, they're getting student access on the wifi on the one network, which is really great.

And then we have, uh, our Sophos Intercept X and our secure XDR, which are all monitored, not Sophos, but the secure XDR is on our servers.

And maybe Wayne, you can touch upon how that works for us at Pingry, but also others.

But Secure XDR is a service that Wayne and Secure one provide to their clients that monitors all of our servers.

And then everything that I just talked about is basically monitored by secure one in our MSP.

But Wayne, yeah, go ahead.

Do you wanna talk about Secure XDR and maybe some other stuff that's here as well? Yeah, for sure.

Thanks, Bob.

Yeah.

Secure XDR, I mean, and I know a lot of folks on this call and, and they'll watch it afterwards.

They understand what, you know, XDR is, it's no longer just, uh, to the end point, you know, segregated or network segregated or servers.

So the, the kind of secret sauce for what we created at Secure XDR goes across all planes, um, real time and it goes back and has tons of automations built into it.

That helps us, uh, have faster response times to any security threat, um, network interruption or issue that, that may take away from the, the real important work of, you know, teaching students.

So, um, yeah, secure XDR has been terrific for us, and that paired with being able to do infrastructure as a service, um, has been a game changer.

And especially for smaller schools.

I mean, Bob, like you didn't need a lot of help, you know, you know what you're doing.

So we are, we are more, you know, great partnership.

Um, but some of the smallest schools that need help has, has been, has been tremendous.

So yeah, secure XDR is pretty good.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Thanks.

And I was also thinking of like Rocket Seam or Seam is is another thing that I utilize for you guys.

Can you talk about that a little bit? 'cause I'm not an expert in Seam, I know it, it change logs and it looks at patterns and, and those types of things.

But help me out there a little bit from, especially from an automation piece.

Yeah, you're right on.

I mean, at the end of the day, it's just, it's a, it's a robust log, uh, log aggregator, right? And it, and our, the automations we have built into it will actually troll through it, um, you know, real time, 24 hours a day looking for things that are unusual and don't belong.

So a SEA can be useful, uh, day one, but where we see it being super helpful is after one year of being installed on either your servers, network firewalls, um, 'cause by that point, they know, especially a school, you know, you guys are, are busier, right? Ramping up in certain times of the year, summertime is slower.

So it begins to learn your business and your patterns, and then if something is unusual that pops up, then it actually will alert us.

And, uh, and, and it just, it's just a, it's a heck of a tool to figure out what's going on and what's different, uh, in your environment and be able to catch bad actors.

Yeah, I think that's still one thing that keeps me up at night.

And I think it's, it's something that's been helpful for me because I guess my fear has always been like somebody's gonna unplug a copier and plug it into their laptop, and they're very savvy.

Like, you know, next thing you know, they're, they're tapped into the network.

But, but that's, that fear is kind of no longer anymore after, uh, this next slide that I'm gonna talk about of our most recent project.

And so we had the opportunity to really just rip and replace our current network and install a, a brand new one.

Uh, you know, Meraki's been around a long time.

Um, but this whole process was about a two year process.

And year one was, I know there was gonna be a big CapEx spend, but we really put a pause on it because we were talking about a, a school project.

And so it allowed us actually, or allowed me to sit back and, and look at the market and how it was changing a little bit.

And it, and it actually was able to save us some money and also in move us into this more infrastructure as a service.

Because initially I was looking at it as a, it's gonna be a big CapEx spend.

We normally go into this, you know, buying it and then keeping it forever and then just not keeping it forever, but just on a normal rotation.

And then in seven years, we're gonna have to do that again and, and kind of rinse and repeat, but allowed the, the market to develop a little bit in a different way.

And I think that's how, kind of how this came together, this idea of talking about infrastructure as a service is because I went through this process and you guys might be going through similar processes or have gone through similar process, or might be thinking about going through a process where you need to like redo a network.

So introduce me to other companies that are out there.

Uh, one is called Meter, and that's strictly their, their business.

They're a network as a service provider, right? You pay one monthly fee and you get networking equipment, but how can we adapt that? I've had a relationship with Wayne and his team for a while.

I've had a relationship with MSPs, and it's been a way for me in the past few years to supplement my three person team and have another expert in the room, um, at a less expensive cost than having a full-time employee.

So I didn't wanna lose that relationship with Wayne and his team.

So I was like, let's figure out how do we do this together? Because I really like Meraki as a solution.

I like Aruba as a solution.

That's what I had before, but which, which player's gonna come on on top? You know, let's, let's talk about it.

What are the benefits, the, what are the pros and cons? And having that relationship with his team and Wayne to just to talk about those things and go through those things kind of bundled in this whole process was really helpful.

Um, so I figured it was probably worth sharing.

Um, so what do we do? We moved to a fully managed cloud network.

Uh, we took out, you know, uh, I figure what it was like 20 switches and a little over a hundred access points, um, ripped and replaced those, um, all the VAN provisioning was done kind of ahead of time.

And with Meraki it was a lot easier to do because it adapts and, and moves the way you wanna move.

And so basically you stage the equipment and you put it in and it's pretty much zero touch.

And then now if something goes down and I need to replace a switch because it's, it's bad or a access point because it's not working properly, I just connect with, with, uh, Wayne's team, and then they send me a new one and it's a zero touch.

Oh, I mean, I have to touch the thing by putting it, putting it up there, or I have him come out and, and they, and they install it for me.

So I don't, I don't physically have to touch it, but I don't have to configure it, it just, I plug it in and it works.

Um, which has been super helpful.

And then the automated alerts, just because it's fully cloud, I started with Arrow Hive when we first got, when I first started here in 2010, we were on Sonic Wall access points, and then we moved to HP access points very quickly after that.

And they were terrible, sorry, hp, but, uh, they, they were, it didn't work well.

Um, and then I moved to Arrow Hive and it was Meraki Aruba and Arrow Hive that came down to the final three back in 2014.

And I moved to Aerohive because they were fully cloud-based.

I didn't have to have a central server or a controller controlling all of the, and being the master or the brain parent of all those access points.

Um, and so I, that was my first introduction into kind of cloud-based networking.

And then moving to Aruba, we moved back to HP Aruba just because of, of pricing at the time.

And then the way the IAPs worked, I just needed that flexibility and that scalability that they were offering as well.

That Arrow Hive at the time wasn't even, wasn't offering with the current models that they were having of access points.

So I moved to them.

Again, Meraki was a little bit outta my reach with cost, but then this time around since 2017 until now, so now last summer was our big project to move into this, and Meraki became more affordable for us.

And I've always wanted to, the, the genes always felt right in that one.

The car always rode nice.

It was, it glide along.

It was like, you know, so I wanted to move into that.

And so, um, it was an attractive deal to, to move into that.

And so we went there and I've haven't looked back ever since, right? So just the alerts that happen, it's cloud-based controller lists.

I don't need to manage servers on campus anymore.

It's easy.

And then his team with my relationship with Secure one has access into it real time, so they don't need to VPN in or, or make sure that's up and running.

And so they're, they're contacting me if something is down versus me having to contact them.

And so, and it removed all, and I was able to remove all the single points of failure by putting in a HA firewall.

So now I have 2 48 firewalls running in high availability.

So if one goes down, the other one just ticks right back in.

And then, like I said before, with the Jump Cloud radius server, just pushing that to the cloud, I know I'm gonna always have a solid internet connection, so why not move it to the cloud? Um, in that, I haven't looked back on that since either.

And that's 500 people every day using Radius connecting.

One of my points that I was worried about is like, is this gonna be too slow to authenticate? But it hasn't been, and it's worked really, really well.

I, and so, um, moving from that project to like, what is automation now looking like? And so I onboard and offboard users with, uh, our HR and our, um, enrollment from our Vera Cross systems.

Right now, I don't have those connected, but I'm looking to connect those.

But what I do is I create them in JumpCloud and then that pushes things down and triggers more events to happen with our Better Cloud solution.

And Google, um, account management is a lot easier now.

So if I move from a person from one OU to like a former employee or a former student, ou that changes their settings, their password, it triggers all sorts of different events.

It removes them from Zoom phone, it takes their Adobe license away, their Microsoft license away.

It just helps to automate all of that versus having to go into every single system and then offboard that user from every single one of those systems.

Um, and then with our cybersecurity alerts, I put nobe before on there as well.

I didn't mention it before, and I, and, um, but Nobe before is our phishing and cybersecurity training for our staff and faculty.

And so I'm able to set up training for them, but also I do a monthly phishing test, and that gives me who's clicked on the links because, you know, humans are definitely the path of least resistance for getting into these systems.

As we recently saw with Harvard and their, uh, email, uh, system or their, one of their systems, I know their alumni system got tapped into, and some personal information got out because a person called up on the phone and asked for their two-step verification and the person bought what they were selling.

So, and then with Sophos, I get alerts internally for all the endpoints that I have, and then I know team and, uh, Wayne and his team get secure one, uh, the secure XDR alerts for anything that's happening on the servers.

And then all the patch compliance and updates are, are handled by Secure one now as well.

So I'm not even going into the servers unless I have to, and that's very rarely, right? So I run a printer server, a file share server, and an aging DNS and DHCP server.

That's my, that used to be my no domain controller, or I have two domain controllers still, but those are now, after this year, next summer projects that I'm gonna be working with, uh, secure one with is, is, uh, retiring those domain controllers and thinking about what I wanna do with DHCP and DNS.

And so I put this kind of, uh, put this chart to get there regards to what does it look like at pingry? And it's, you know, it goes back to the hat picture of just like, wow, we wear so many hats or increasing complexity.

I kind of made this so it wasn't a little as simple, but if you follow all the lines, it makes sense to me.

So this might be my, uh, undiagnosed A DHD kicking in and looking at this, but, um, y you know, it kind of starts with pingree and secure one's relationship, right? So we have a, so because we have a solid relationship, I'm, I'm, I'm good with, with this, I know a lot of this hardware is all taken care of, especially because of all the patching updates, firmware updates, all of those things.

And then JumpCloud is in the middle here.

That's kind of become our source of truth.

Uh, that's why I put it in the middle.

But then that feeds into our Microsoft and Google accounts.

And then with Google credentials and account creation, it creates their Zoom phone account.

And BetterCloud does that as well.

It triggers their Adobe account, their know before, uh, we use JumpCloud as an MDM, so that provisions their, our physical endpoint devices, so their iPad, their Mac laptops or their PC laptops, um, Google is, then that's how you log into Canvas, which is our connected to our Vera cross, our, which is our student information system, which then feeds into our canvas course and our Magnus health systems and our, all this stuff, right? So it's all interconnected.

I'm just even thinking about how secure one manages our data, which is in turn our VM and our servers that are on there, which, you know, our print servers and then our, you could even include like infrastructure as a service as like your copiers, right? I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I'm sure I would say most of the people would raise their hand and say, yes, that's me, but you probably lease your copiers.

And when you call up, they come and they fix the copier when there's a jam or when you need more toner, et cetera.

I even consider that infrastructure as a service because it's zero touch, it's automated, and you're not the one having to deal with it.

Hopefully all of that is making sense.

So I wanted to kick it to Wayne here.

I know I still put some notes here, but, um, what's, what's the perspective been for you, Wayne, in regards to what are some of the things that you're seeing in the marketplace and how are you helping some schools? Yeah, thanks Bob.

I wanted to jump in here and, and just do a quick note on kind of why we even started, uh, the company, right? So, so about four and a half years ago, you know, we kept getting calls from my old colleagues from the independent school world, and I've been lucky to be in this community for probably about 15 years now.

And I kept hearing that, you know, people had to call multiple companies to do multiple, uh, things kind of on the, you know, for their entire environment.

And also they, they felt like they weren't getting the support that they needed.

So we, we literally started the company to help address those issues.

So if you were looking to have a, a vulnerability assessment, that would be a separate company, and if you needed help, you didn't have the staff to remediate what they found, you needed a separate company.

And then the third time, if you needed someone to manage and help your IT partner, that'd be another company.

So we literally got the right people in place and are able to do all three at a really high level.

And obviously we're focused towards independent schools.

So that's what we saw four and a half years ago and said, you know, this is why we need to, we need to exist, and this is our why.

Um, and at this point, I mean, infrastructure's a service has been around, like Bob, you and I talked about a couple days ago, it's been around in different forms.

Like, you know, you could always lease equipment, and that's like the, in its most simplest form.

Um, but infrastructure as a service is, is so much more than that because it's backed up by our, our complete team's support for, for the school.

So it's, you know, yes, you have one payment for all your equipment, which is great, but it's really the backend.

And, and when something happens, you need someone that's there to help immediately, right? You don't want someone on site a day later when your students can't get into their systems and they can't learn.

You want 'em immediately.

Um, so that's what we saw, that's what we saw in, in the environment.

Uh, we're seeing, you know, schools struggle with having to pay two, three, $400,000 for a new network every five years.

And I think that IAAS has, has been, been really helpful.

'cause you know, we're not, obviously, you know, we're helping schools.

We're, we're not trying to sell anything.

I mean, you know, schools are buying this equipment, right? Like this is happening.

So it's what's the best use case for schools.

So that's kinda what we're seeing up there.

Cool.

Yeah, and I think I, I think maybe we touched upon this in a cost efficiency slide here, but I'm just thinking the CapEx spend is, you know, that's becoming harder.

And we see the budget constraints, people were saying that's one of their obstacles, right? And so this helps to spread that out a little bit more.

And so, um, you know, I I, I'll speak from the I perspective here with school and MSP partnership.

I think I put this on here just so if you don't have an MSP or maybe you do have an MSP, like, what's the partnership look like? And like, so for instance, for me, it's like I, I'm the strategy person.

I'm the user relationship.

I'm the person that's here that knows our community, that knows the people, or my team is the people.

I know the people here, right? So our teachers and students, um, we're, we're aligning our technology with our academic program and making sure that we're supporting everybody in that proper way.

And then we're setting policy on how that works, right? So everything for our acceptable use policy to, you know, our cybersecurity policies and, and what are we doing and what do we wanna see, and then working with an MSP to make sure that those goals are met on my side.

And then I rely on Wayne and his team to monitor, be up on the latest security trends, uh, making sure everything that I own that, or lease or whatever it may be from a service standpoint that they're patching and it's up to date.

Um, and then they're basically infrastructure operations, and then they're looking to scale.

They're helping us scale and position ourselves to be nimble and flexible in that way.

And so, um, what this might look like for you, right? So if you don't already have a relationship with MSP, you don't necessarily have to have one, but I definitely recommend one, especially if those, you know, with one concern being like staff, right? It's another way to hire, quote unquote, hire another person or have an expert in your corner that you can lean on for, for things, especially with uptime being such a, such a need that we have to have, I'm just thinking on this too, and maybe I'll say this in the end, if internet is down, is school happening for you? And if the answer is yes, then you need to have some sort of relationship with somebody outside of your team, just because you can't let that all fall on your shoulders.

It's, it's gonna lead to burnout, and it's gonna lead to too much, uh, too much burden on you, right? So see if you can work.

So I just put a little framework here, especially for, um, you know, those maybe, uh, exploring this option, right? So what this might look like, you know, like look for repetitive task that you can automate one or two.

I say three.

Um, pick a system that you can move to.

IS the easiest one being like backups or disaster recovery.

That's like, you know, low hanging fruit right there.

Um, you know, monitor automation, import sec, you know, to import security posture, right? So monitoring that, uh, monitoring your, your security posture there and, and evaluate SPS MSP support needs, right? Where do you need help? Where do you need flexibility and capacity, right? And then start small.

And then it's, it's almost like you need to just interview them, right? Interview a few people, invite them in, take the time to do it.

Especially if you're trying to do a bigger project, um, and you wanna establish a relationship, take the time, don't rush into something, don't do something because it's cost the least or the most just to find what, right, what fits for you.

Um, and I feel like the, the best relationship to have is the one that knows you best and the one that you feel most comfortable with, because then you can work together in a, in more of a partnership, then the MSP or somebody just saying, this is how we do it.

You need to fit to our mold.

And I think in independent schools, I know the way I look at things, it's like, no, you guys need to, to mix with us a little bit.

Yes, we wanna be compliant and all those things, but we also wanna live by our mission and live by what, what our values are as a school here.

Um, and then moving into cost efficiency, right? Building in a predictable budget, avoiding and reducing refresh cycles.

So I know with our refresh cycle of our last, uh, network, or even the refresh cycles of our, our laptops here, I'm not even talking about those, but just having a predictable budget and how that's gonna pace out for you over maybe the course of year or, and, and reduce the strain so you're not having a huge CapEx spend every few years, right? Um, I know as things get more and more expensive, I was just hearing some numbers that are out there.

It's just, it just gets more exponentially more expensive.

And I think there's other companies that are probably trying to position, there's companies that are trying to position us to be on a more, to spread that out a little bit more, because I don't think it's gonna get less expensive, especially for security stuff.

Um, and then I do think where there is some cost benefit is this, uh, soft cost.

And so you have more time for your staff if you're not, uh, working with an MSP or on some sort of service plan with somebody else.

I know for us, it's reduced the amount of service, um, that we've had to take away from our, because we're patching servers and making sure that's up to date and all of those types of things.

Um, so it allows us to be in the classroom.

It allows us to be walking around helping folks out with everyday things.

Um, and I think we're now a more approachable department because of that.

And we've been, I've always tried to achieve that and support that, um, especially ever since I've been a director here, as, as build that culture in.

And this allows me to do that even more.

Um, and so it reduces all sorts of downtime, all that again, so solves, uh, potentially solve staffing challenges with, uh, information as a service, right? What are we doing here to solve that? Uh, this is to help wrap up the presentation.

I know we've been talking for 47 minutes here.

So what does infrastructure as a service do and automation do? And it helps to solve challenges with staffing.

So reducing the amount of repetitive tasks that we have to do, uh, and embraces a partnership.

You know, I I say embrace partnership with your MSPI say Ms p plus school equals scale and security.

And I think that's a good equation to look, look at.

Um, but I, I, I enjoy my time with secure one.

Um, maybe secure one's not the right fit for you in some ways, or you already have a great relationship with MSPs, but I encourage you to talk to some if you, if you don't have it, because building a partnership would only help you, uh, especially as they see things from the corporate side of things too.

And, and how maybe, um, you know, technology is moving around us, uh, especially from the corporate side.

'cause usually it hits the corporate side, they make changes and then schools are a little less slow to adopt those, those changes.

Um, and so moving beyond hardware, right? So shifting informa to, uh, infrastructure as a service building resilience and cybersecurity, especially for cybersecurity connectivity, you reducing downtime.

I know a concern is those CloudFlare AWS where some of these big companies were relying upon them to be up and running, but I have to say, for the most part, they are up and running 99.99% of the time where I couldn't necessarily say that about our solution prior, you know, to maybe 2000 and COVID, right? Or even a couple years ago when we replaced our, our BM servers a few years ago, right? And now moving into a direction where mostly everything is cloud-based.

Um, I don't have to come in and open up those doors anymore to let the heat out.

And, and, um, not, not so worried about that.

It allows us to be a lot more flexible, especially with Zoom phone and, and, uh, cl cloud-based tools that way.

And so to wrap up, uh, that's it.

Um, my name's Robert Ogden.

Call me Bob.

I'm always happy to talk, always happy to chat, uh, talk shop with you.

Um, so please email me at be ogden@pingree.org or you can reach me at pingree school extension 2 0 9, and then Wayne, uh, I'll leave you to give your own contact information if you want.

No, not at all.

Thank this.

Thanks for doing this, Bob.

I appreciate it.

That was really great.

I look forward to the next one when we're at NBOA this, uh, in a couple of months.

So appreciate you, man.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Yeah, I guess a little, yeah, a little plug.

I'll be at NBOA this, um, this March, right? For the annual conference, giving the same talk, um, to business officers and talking to business officers.

I dunno if you're, if you're a direct report to a business to A CFO or to your head of school, but having conversations and bringing up this topic to them and just talking about it with them, especially as your budget planning for next year, I encourage you to look at that, um, and see what's out there, right? Because it can potentially reduce the CapEx spend, which is always helpful for the CFOs to say, Hey, we're gonna have more, more cash in the, in the, in the bin here, so in the bag.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you, Wayne.

Um, we're really grateful for you sharing, and I'll just say, Atlas has a wonderful partnership with MBOA, so I love that you're there.

Um, having those conversations with business officers, we love collaborating and ensuring the two departments are, uh, working with one another effectively.

And I love, um, that last slide of kind of the workflow efficiency.

We definitely, the Atlas team takes that approach for sure.

The, um, saving time by automating the redundant tasks so we can have more time to spend with our members.

We have documented workflows, so I love that really resonated over here.

Um, and we are grateful, secure one to your support.

Um, are there any questions before I end the recording? All right, well, I'll go ahead and stop the recording, but before I do another, thank you so much for, um, sharing your incredible thought leadership with us.

You're welcome.

Thank you guys.

Thanks for listening and, and, uh, have a great rest of the day..