Securing Chromebooks in a K-12 environment

According to Gartner and other leading IT industry analysts, Google Chromebook deployments continue to rise in the K-12 market. Just recently it was noted that Chromebooks were now the leading devices in K-12 schools, covering over 50% of the market nationwide. With the huge expansion of Chromebook deployments for use both on and off campus, IT admins need to have the ability to easily and quickly enforce content security policies.

In the past it was easy to deploy remote filtering on PCs, Macs, and most mobile devices, but the browser-based configuration and lack of an operating system made Chromebooks difficult to manage. You cannot install software the same way as you can on a traditional laptop or mobile device. To solve this problem, Barracuda is excited to announce Barracuda Chromebook Security Extension.   Now for the first time, the Barracuda Web Security Gateway offers a plug-in for Chromebooks that enables the enforcement of policies when the devices are both on and off the network.

Along with the Barracuda Chromebook Security Extension, Barracuda has also launched expanded SSL inspection capability on additional Barracuda Web Security Gateway models. Because of the fact that two-thirds of web traffic today is SSL encrypted, we know it is paramount for a web proxy infrastructure to have the ability to decrypt SSL traffic. You need to have the ability to inspect and manage online content normally hidden by SSL, such as that found in social media, web-based email, and search engines. You can enforce policies on entire platforms, or enable more granular access controls.

We also previously released Google Apps for Education Enforcement which allows administrators to block users from accessing consumer based apps like Gmail, while allowing access to School sponsored versions.  This means that students will be able to access school Gmail and use school Google Docs, but not access personal Gmail or upload school data to their personal Google Drive.  This gives schools more control and visibility into what documents are transferred between the user and the Google Docs services.

Barracuda works hard to help K-12 organizations protect their students, data, and IT budgets.  We understand that there are unique challenges and sophisticated threats in today’s technology-rich learning environment.  For more information about Barracuda solutions for K-12, visit our corporate site here.  For more about the Barracuda Web Security Gateway (WSG), visit the product site here.

Additional resources:

• Barracuda WSG corporate product site


• Barracuda WSG 30-day risk-free evaluation


• Barracuda WSG documentation


• Barracuda WSG for Education documentation


• Barracuda K-12 Solutions