Cairo, Egypt, 4th January, 2021 – The Knowledge Hub (TKH) has deployed state of the art wired and wireless networking technology from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. The solution enables utilisation of the latest digital learning tools and connected campus security systems. It offers a convenient ‘Guest Portal’ for rapid, secure and controlled internet access and delights users with seamless roaming across the campus. Network performance issues or negative feedback from staff and students have been eliminated and the system enables seamless centralised management of networks across the entire campus.
“Our flagship initiative has been setting up a multidisciplinary educational hub that host branches of leading international universities, delivering the same academic programmes offered at their mother campus and thus leading to the same, exact qualification and degrees. Providing students with the same quality of experience is pivotal to this, and technology is a fundamental enabler of these world-class experiences,” explained Hossam Ismail, IT Network Lead.
Recognising that mobility and pervasive connectivity would be essential to implementing the innovations they intended to roll out at the University, TKH’s IT team selected Aruba as their networking technology partner. “We needed exceptional wireless coverage across the entire campus,” said Ismail. “To protect the digital identities and activities of our students and staff, security was also a key requirement and Aruba was a clear industry leader in both these areas. We will be introducing several internationally acclaimed educational institutions to the region and need to ensure our environment is flexible, scalable and built on open standards. Aruba ticked all these boxes”.
To deliver secure access for professors and admin staff while providing convenient wireless connectivity for visitors and guests, and to facilitate bring your own device (BYOD) for students in a controlled and uncompromisingly secure manner, the University implemented Aruba ClearPass. Ismail and his team also decided to leverage Airwave Network Management to centrally monitor and manage the entire network so that the quality and integrity of services could be maintained at consistently high levels.
To deliver its digitally oriented curriculum, TKH makes use of several digital tools including a Learning Management System. “The Aruba solution allows students and staff to have seamless, uninterrupted access to these essential learning tools. Moreover, through orchestrated and automated user and devices authentication via ClearPass, they can use these applications on their own personal devices which greatly aids adoption and utilisation,” said Ismail.
Also using ClearPass, his team has set up a ‘Guest Portal’ that conveniently authenticates staff and students based on the same credentials registered in the University’s Active Directory. Moreover, Aruba’s solution ensures compliance by automatically conducting a health check on all devices trying to connect to the network. “If any vulnerabilities are detected, the system automatically takes remediation steps such as performing operating system and software updates. This ensures that every device that connects to our network is authenticated and secure,” said Ismail.
“Our students and staff are incredibly happy with the performance and convenience of our network and associated digital services. This gives us the confidence to keep introducing Aruba solutions and new innovations that set our University apart as a pioneer,” concluded Ismail.
