Saasyan Assure & Fortinet FortiGate - A Joint Solution For K-12 Schools

Internet and other networking technologies have improved the efficiency and richness of the learning experience in many schools. However, the risks created by potential network misuse or security breaches have also increased substantially and affected resources and cost for their ICT staff.

Saasyan and Fortinet have partnered to deliver an industry-leading Student Safety and Wellbeing solution to address challenges created by network misuse, security breaches and high-risk student behaviour online. Saasyan’s approach to student safety and wellbeing is fundamentally different from other vendor solutions. 

Assure, in conjunction with FortiGate NGFWs, enables schools to go beyond the network layers in their mission to protect their students and network from the dangers of the online world. This is achieved by automatically preventing successful cyberattacks and democratising access to the tools and the data that school staff need to ensure the student’s cyber wellbeing while maintaining a modern and engaging learning environment.

The Benefits For Schools

The joint solution adds multiple benefits for schools as it both protects them from possible network misuse or security breaches, but also enables the protection of students from cyberbullying, self-harm, threats of violence.

Benefits include :

• Adds industry-leading AI-powered student safety and wellbeing capability to next-generation firewalls from Fortinet
• Enables K-12 centric reporting and alerting, enabling schools to act before an incident takes place
• Makes classroom control simple and intuitive, saving schools time and effort
• Enables schools to promote good digital citizenship and protect students from cyberbullying and self-harm while maintaining a modern and engaging learning environment

How Is the Integration Set-Up?

Assure receives the URL Filtering, Traffic, and Threat logs from the FortiGate via Syslog. It also interacts with the FortiGate API in order to create temporary custom web categories, schedules, and security policies to facilitate self-service classroom control.

How Can Schools Keep An Eye One the Online Activity of The Students Who Are Deemed To Be At Risk Of Self-harm?

Through its industry-leading application control, User Identification, and Web Filtering capabilities, FortiGate firewalls allow students access to only the applications and websites sanctioned by the school. It also performs SSL decryption on selected traffic.

Assure analyses log and packet capture data from the NGFW to allow schools to act before an incident takes place, halting damage— and saving lives. It does this by:

• Continuously scanning the web searches performed, the streaming content accessed, and chat messages sent and received by these students
• Identifying the activities that are indicative of self-harm
• Notifying the school’s pastoral care staff about these activities

How Can Schools Recognise And Promote Good Digital Citizenship Among Students?

Through their industry-leading Web Filtering and User Identification capabilities, FortiGate next-generation firewalls provide granular logs on the sites accessed and applications used by each and every student. Saasyan Assure makes use of these logs to calculate each student’s web and cyber rating on a daily basis and highlights the ones who are at risk. 

How Can Teachers Allow Access To Certain Online Content Without Relying On The ICT Team?

Self-service firewall and web filter management allow teachers and non-ICT staff to grant temporary access to online content that is normally blocked, allowing teaching activities to continue unimpeded—and integration with leading Learning Management Systems (LMS) allows access to be controlled within the LMS. Assure leverages the feature-rich FortiGate API to allow non-technical staff to perform these tasks on-demand and in a truly self-service manner.

Saasyan Assure Adding Student Safety and Wellbeing Capabilities

Saasyan Assure adds student safety capabilities to NGFWs from Fortinet. Alerts and reporting allow schools to act before an incident takes place, halting damage—and saving lives. Assure makes reporting and classroom control simple and intuitive, saving schools time and effort.

Thanks to its deep integration with the FortiGate API, Assure enables schools to align, set, and democratize access to the tools and the data non-ICT staff need to ensure the student’s cyber wellbeing. This makes it possible for schools to proactively safeguard students from inappropriate online content, promote good digital citizenship, and protect students from cyberbullying and self-harm, while
maintaining a modern and engaging learning environment.

About Fortinet FortiGate

Fortinet FortiGate next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) enable security-driven networking and consolidate industry-leading security capabilities such as intrusion prevention system (IPS), web filtering, secure sockets layer (SSL) inspection, application control, user identification, and automated threat protection.

Fortinet NGFWs meet the performance needs of highly scalable, hybrid IT architectures, enabling organisations to reduce complexity and manage security risks. 

As an integral part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, FortiGate NGFWs can communicate within the comprehensive Fortinet security portfolio as well as third-party security solutions in a multivendor environment. To increase the speed of operations and response, they share threat intelligence and improve security posture and automated workflow.

About Saasyan Assure

Saasyan is a leader in AI-Powered Student Safety and Wellbeing solutions, serving the K-12 education market globally.

We enable schools to detect and intervene against student cyber bullying, self-harm, suicide & threats of violence and terror.

Today we are ensuring the safety and wellbeing of over 400,000 school children and teachers across 600 government and non-government schools.

Saasyan applies advanced analytics and AI to monitor, alert and report across all student digital activities, including in chat, email, search, websites, social posts and videos.

Our cloud-based software-as-a-service solution integrates and leverages data and technologies already deployed by schools such as identity management systems, next generation firewalls and productivity platforms including Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. We then apply multiple levels of intelligence including a crowd-sourced words and phrases dictionary, fuzzy logic, natural language processing and cohort analysis to determine context and identify high-risk outliers in student behaviour.

Saasyan’s automated alerts and on-demand reports enable wellbeing counsellors to detect and respond to high-risk student behavioural and emotional indicators early, safeguard students across all their digital interactions and deliver on their student duty of care responsibilities.

At Saasyan, student safety and wellbeing is at the heart of our existence.

Our mission has just begun.