Round the Clock Student Safety at Whanganui Collegiate School

Whanganui Collegiate School collaborated with Saasyan to achieve comprehensive digital student safety across BYOD devices, boarding houses, and Microsoft 365, becoming New Zealand's first N4L managed Palo Alto firewall integration.

Background

Founded in 1854, Whanganui Collegiate School is one of New Zealand’s leading co-educational, state-integrated day and boarding school and a Cambridge International School.

With approximately 400 students, around two-thirds of whom live on campus, the school’s duty of care extends around the clock, seven days a week.

Challenges

In the classroom, teachers were able to actively supervise students through observation and screen monitoring.

However, changes from software vendors, particularly around support for BYOD devices, have reduced the effectiveness of this approach. 

As a result, this level of oversight no longer continues beyond the classroom, and when students return to their boarding houses, they are using personal devices throughout the evening and into the night without direct supervision.

Given its complex mix of devices of more over 1,000 devices spanning Windows, Apple, Android mobile phones, and BYOD, the school reviewed its digital safety approach and identified several key challenges:

Limited boarding house visibility

No reliable oversight of student activity on personal devices outside school hours.

VPN circumvention

Students bypassed web filtering, undermining content controls and trend detection.

Microsoft 365 blind spots

Minimal visibility across chats, email, and OneDrive, causing investigations to be slow and manual.

BYOD complexity

Predominantly personal devices created significant challenges for consistent monitoring.

Existing digital safety provider limitations

Full BYOD functionality could not be guaranteed, requiring a decision to replace or accept reduced visibility.

Solution

After evaluating digital student safety platforms, the team broadened its search to include international providers. Australia, with its larger education market and more mature cybersecurity landscape, emerged as a credible market for a best-in-class solution.

Following an in-depth trial to assess compatibility with both the school’s needs and existing technology environment, Assure was selected as the preferred solution.

The decision to commit to Assure ultimately came down to three factors:

Agent-free BYOD coverage

Assure's ability to provide visibility over BYOD devices through a simple certificate install, made comprehensive coverage achievable without the legal and practical complexity of managed agents.

Collaboration-driven approach

Rather than a one-off sale, Saasyan worked alongside the school and Network for Learning (N4L) to deliver a tailored integration.

Cloud-based, agent-free deployment

Assure’s cloud‑based, agent‑free deployment eliminated the need for on‑site hardware, reducing the school’s infrastructure footprint and ongoing maintenance burden.

Outcomes 

With the Crown-owned technology company, Network for Learning (N4L), migrating more than 2,540 schools over to its new, next-generation Managed Network for schools and kura, Whanganui Collegiate became the first school in New Zealand to integrate Assure with the N4L-managed Palo Alto Networks firewall. The Managed Network Upgrade is replacing school firewalls before they reach end-of-life and switching to a new internet connection.

Integration of Assure with the Palo Alto firewall was made possible through a close collaboration between the school and Saasyan, and the support of N4L, using Palo Alto Networks’ on-premises firewall and advanced security services.

On a day-to-day basis, Assure sits within a broader collaborative model between the IT and pastoral care teams. Alerts are configured for both teams, so no single person carries the monitoring burden. When something is flagged, it’s reviewed to determine if it’s a false positive, a one-off or an emerging pattern, to agree on the appropriate steps.

While still early in its Assure journey, with the full Palo Alto Networks firewall integration recently finalised, meaningful results are already evident and the roadmap ahead is clear:

BYOD challenge resolved

Certificate-based BYOD device connection has enabled comprehensive coverage without the legal and practical complications of agent-based approaches.

Boarding house digital visibility achieved

The school now has digital visibility into the boarding environment. The next phase will push alerts directly to boarding House Masters, enabling faster, on-the-ground responses rather than routing alerts through the IT or pastoral team first.

Microsoft 356 blind spot closed

A previously unknown integration, gives the school now full visibility into email, Teams chat, and OneDrive. It has enabled the team to identify emerging patterns and replace slow, manual processes, uncovering incidents that previously went undetected.

Effective AI-powered keyword detection  

Assure’s ability to understand evolving student language and emerging phrases far exceeded expectations, accurately surfacing risks that traditional keyword-based filters would miss.

Classroom rollout planned

Due to a deliberate decision to avoid overloading teachers during a period of significant wider digital change at the school, classroom monitoring features will be rolled out incrementally.

Advice for Other Schools

Beyond the specific capabilities of Assure, Whanganui Collegiate has drawn several broader lessons to share with other schools considering a digital student safety platform:

A powerful tool that requires human judgement

Assure's strength is how it can be inserted into any process within the school around pastoral care. Its value depends entirely on the people and processes around it, and it complements and strengthens the school’s existing pastoral care framework, but does not replace it.

Perspective matters before action

Resist the urge to intervene on every alert. Assure builds a picture of student behaviour over time, helping staff develop judgment to recognise when an alert genuinely warrants a response.

IT and wellbeing must work as one

The most effective responses occur when the IT and pastoral teams work in close collaboration, combining technical insight with wellbeing expertise.

Distance is not a barrier

Whanganui Collegiate works closely with Saasyan’s Australian team despite the geographic gap, and the partnership has never felt remote. When evaluating vendors, look beyond the domestic market that can offer scalability, operate within robust cybersecurity and student wellbeing legislative frameworks, and deliver through genuine partnership rather than just a product.

N4L-managed firewall integration strengthens delivery

Assure leverages its integration with the N4L managed Palo Alto Networks Firewall, reducing the need for additional in-house infrastructure and ongoing support. This allows the school to rely on an existing, robust network layer while extending visibility and protection in a way that is scalable and easier to manage.

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