Case Study #3:

Our third case reveals Aristotle™ providing a surprise benefit to school administration. For several weeks, a small Midwestern K-12 school district had been researching products that could provide a window into their network. They needed a better understanding of computer utilization in the district, help in correcting recent computer problems and answers for the school board regarding use of technology in the district.

Using the simple installation procedures, the Aristotle™ agent was installed on over 1000 workstations across the district in less than two hours. As soon as the agent was deployed, the DataVault™ began gathering information on the applications and activities of all computer usage across the district. It didn’t take long to identify a normal usage pattern for most systems and begin a profile of how the district's computers were being used.

One of the first discoveries was that a computer lab was not getting much use, yet teachers were constantly complaining that they did not have sufficient lab space for their classes. After a little research, it was found that class sizes were generally 18–20 students and this lab only had 15 computer systems. After moving five workstations into this lab, teachers again began scheduling classes in this lab.

The value of Aristotle™ did not stop there. A few days passed before abnormal activity on the middle school principal's computer was noticed. It appeared that the principal was using several unusual applications. In addition it was noticed that the principal had visited some atypical websites and his use of the Instant Messenger application increased significantly. Alerts were set off indicating file transfer. Following a few minutes of researching the data gathered by Aristotle™, it was found that images were being downloaded from an ftp server located outside the United States.