Case Study: Career Education Corporation achieves software‑license audit protection and centralized asset management with IBM BigFix (IBM)

Career Education Corporation eliminates software license audit risks

Career Education Corporation (CEC), which serves more than 75,000 students across 80 campuses and 10 offices, faced a fragmented endpoint environment with over 20,000 endpoints and no centralized way to track software or hardware. Multiple software vendors initiated license review requests, exposing CEC to significant noncompliance penalties and leaving it unable to reliably deploy patches, antivirus updates or encryption. CEC selected IBM and the IBM BigFix solution to address these risks.

IBM deployed IBM BigFix for software and hardware asset management, patching, antivirus updates, laptop encryption and desktop imaging, giving CEC a single, scalable platform for its mixed OS and distributed connectivity environment. The solution centralized control of 20,000+ endpoints, provided real‑time inventory and compliance visibility, enabled verification of laptop encryption, reduced manual update overhead, and cut Microsoft Visio and Project license expenditures by 92%, eliminating audit exposure and improving security and operational efficiency.

Career Education Corporation

Jeff Lemke

Director of IT Site Operations