CUSTOMER CASE STUDY BISHOP HEBER HIGH SCHOOL‘We couldn’t have done
this without Sophos MDR’,says Bishop Heber HighSchoolBishop Heber High School is based in Malpas, Cheshire West. It is an
11-18 foundation school with around 1,300 students aged 11 to 18 years
old, and a staff population of around 180. It has an enviable reputationfor excellence both within its catchment area and far beyond, into East
Cheshire, Shropshire, and North Wales.

CUSTOMER-AT-A-GLANCE
Bishop Heber High School
Industry
Education

Sophos CustomerSince 2015
Number of Users
550 endpointsManaged Services
Sophos Managed Detectionand Response (MDR)
Products
Network - Sophos Firewall
Endpoint - Sophos Intercept X

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY BISHOP HEBER HIGH SCHOOL“The ransomware attack had a huge impact on our school across theboard. Students and teachers couldn’t access any work on their laptops
or network. We had to take cash in the canteen, and had to communicate
all of this with our email and phone system down. We needed support toget everything safely up and running again as soon as we possibly could.
Sophos and our channel partner were fantastic in helping us achieve this.“Maura Nesbitt, Business Manager, Bishop Heber High School

In April 2023, Bishop Heber High School
experienced a ransomware attack thatcaused severe disruption, impacting students,teachers, support staff and parents, and had asignificant financial impact. The school’s entire
IT infrastructure was affected. Read on to findout how the school recovered, and how it is now
protected 24/7/365 by Sophos MDR.

Business challenges
In April 2023, Bishop Heber High School faced
an immense challenge following the discovery
that a ransomware note had been placed on of
the school’s servers. The school was forced to
shut down its entire IT infrastructure including
550 endpoints. This impacted IT services forstaff, students, support staff and parents, inaddition to the telephony, reprographics, printing,canteen payment systems, and access to all
files and emails. While the school had been a
Sophos customer for eight years, and prior to theransomware attack had utilised some Sophos
solutions, it had not implemented comprehensive
security across some parts of its IT infrastructure.
Staff were forced to use alternative resources to beable to continue to teach students in school. Theransom attackers demanded a large sum, which

doubled each day the school did not pay. Instead ofpaying the ransom, the school instead bore the costof bringing in specialist engineers to get IT services
safely and securely up and running again. They
turned to Sophos partner Virtue Technologies forsupport with this.

The Technical Solution
The school made the decision to bring in Sophos
partner Virtue Technologies’ rapid response team tohelp restore the IT systems after the ransomware
attack. The team carried out a ‘Discovery’assessment to fully understand the size and scaleof the attack. Based on these findings, the Virtue
Technologies team took steps to isolate the threat,
initiate the recovery process, and safeguard theschool’s IT infrastructure. The rapid response
team provided a full recovery plan, including a

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY BISHOP HEBER HIGH SCHOOL“After the ransomware attack, we really wanted thebest protection we could find to prevent furtherattacks. The Sophos MDR service seemed like theobvious next-level solution for us. The support andprotection the MDR team provide us is simply notsomething we could ever accomplish ourselves
within both our budget and resource limitations.“David Curry, Headteacher, Bishop Heber High School

step-by-step recovery phase, which enabled theschool’s leaders to relay key information to staff andcommunicate with parents.
During this process, the school’s leadership team
took action to strengthen IT security to ensure thiswould not happen again. With the help of Virtue
Technologies, they began looking for a solution toprovide comprehensive monitoring of the school’sIT systems around the clock. It was clear that theschool’s IT team of three staff would not have thecapacity and expertise to monitor systems 24/7
or respond rapidly in the event of another threat.
After considering various options with Virtue
Technologies, they opted for Sophos Managed
Detection and Response (MDR).
Sophos MDR was implemented at the school in
September 2023. With Sophos MDR, the school’sentire IT infrastructure is now monitored by Sophos’team of threat hunters and incident response
experts, who take rapid action in the event of athreat. The school’s IT team also now has accessto the Sophos team of experts for guidance andsupport.
According to Paul Roby, Head of Projects at Virtue
Technologies: “We had to interrogate and shut down
the entire system to ensure the cyber criminals
were locked out. We then introduced a 360 degree
suite of solutions from Sophos, which was Intercept
X on all endpoints and servers, and Sophos MDR.
With these in place we could then enable IPS andATP on firewalls, while data was put onto a separate
network and tested to ensure it was safe before it
was brought back onto the school’s network.”

Business Benefits
Since implementing Sophos MDR, the school
experiences significant benefits from the service.
Maura Nesbitt, Business Manager at the school,highlights three standout benefits. “We’ve
benefitted in three key areas, since implementing
Sophos MDR. Firstly, we have peace of mind that
we’re protected from another attack at any time.
Secondly, it’s the most cost-effective solution tomeet our needs. And thirdly, it’s noticeable that it’s
taken a lot of stress away from our IT team and they
can now focus on their day-to-day tasks” stress x 2here.

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY BISHOP HEBER HIGH SCHOOL

Maura and the team at Bishop Heber High School
list additional key benefits from Sophos MDR andworking with Virtue Technologies as being:Ì 24/7 protection and round the clock monitoring,managed detection, and responseÌ Peace of mind that all people andsystems are protectedÌ Confidence that the school will not encounter thedisruption and expense of another cyberattackÌ Excellent guidance and support fromboth Sophos and Virtue Technologies
Ì An easy transition into the service from theexisting Sophos solutions the school was usingÌ Less stress for the IT team and moretime available to carry out daily work

“I would highly recommend Sophos
to any school looking to strengthen
the security of their IT systems,”
says Maura. “Since the ransomware
event we experienced, the Sophos
team and Virtue Technologies havebeen on a journey with us, providing
support and guidance the whole time.
We know we’ve got 24/7 protection
now across our entire IT system. We
couldn’t have done this without them.”

To find out more about Sophos
solutions, visit Sophos.com© Copyright 2024 Sophos Ltd. All rights reserved.
Registered in England and Wales No. 2096520, The Pentagon, Abingdon Science Park, Abingdon, OX14 3YP, UKSophos is a registered trademark of Sophos Ltd. All other product and company names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

2024-04-30 CCS-EN (PS)