Sophos To Protect All Northern Irish Schools From Virus Attack
Sophos defends all schools through ICL
Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection, today announced that it is to protect IT systems in all of Northern Ireland’s schools from virus attack. Sophos will defend the schools as part of a deal with eBusiness services company, ICL. Under the terms of the deal, all Northern Irish secondary schools will switch from their existing anti-virus protection (provided through CLASS – the Computerisation of Local Administration Systems in Schools) to that provided by Sophos. All of the region’s primary school IT systems are already protected by Sophos Anti-Virus.
ICL, which has contracts with CLASS to supply all Northern Ireland schools with maintained IT administration systems, has purchased an unlimited education user licence from Sophos. This licence will cover all 240 secondary schools in the region, in addition to the 650 primary schools with computers already covered. When the remaining 334 primary schools receive their computer systems, Sophos will protect all schools in the region – a total of 1,224. Sophos also protects 50% of schools in England and Wales through ICL and other partners and offers educational licences at specially reduced rates.
“When people think of the damage viruses do, it’s often in the context of big business,” said Mark Forrest, sales director at Sophos. “However, the implications of a virus infection at a school, charity or other public service are equally serious. Sophos is committed to providing the best possible anti-virus protection at a sensible price.”
“Sophos Anti-Virus has an excellent track record in education,” added Roy Beattie, CLASS Director. “The license obtained by ICL for Northern Ireland will offer us a high degree of flexibility and the potential to use this software in all our schools on both Administration and Curriculum systems.”
About Sophos
Sophos is one of the world’s largest specialist developers of anti-virus software. The products are sold and supported through a global network of subsidiaries and partners in more than 120 countries. Sophos Anti-Virus is widely used by large corporations, banks and governments. For more information please visit http://www.sophos.com.
About ICL
ICL is one of Europe’s leading e-Business services companies and employs more than 20,000 people in 40 countries. It designs, builds and operates innovative solutions for customers in the financial services, telecoms, retail, government, utilities and travel markets. ICL is wholly owned by Fujitsu Limited, a Â?31 billion leader in Internet-based IT solutions for the global marketplace. ICL is the European-centred arm of Fujitsu’s global IT services strategy. ICL’s corporate website: http://www.icl.com
About ICL in Ireland
ICL employs over 1000 people in Ireland focusing on the 3 key strategic business areas of e-Innovation, e-Applications and e-Infrastructure. The ICL software development operations in Ireland include Oracle Centres of Excellence in Belfast, Dublin and Dundalk, the IT Centre in Dublin specialising in eCommerce, Smartcards and Java, and the Microsoft Solution Centre in Belfast. In addition, ICL also has several associated companies including Kainos (CRM and document management) and Synergy Centres (Multimedia). As well as meeting the needs of ICL’s customers in Ireland these operations also provide services to ICL’s customers internationally. ICL’s Ireland website: http://www.icl.ie