Case Study: CHRIST University achieves centralized next-generation firewall protection with Sophos

CHRIST gains bespoke security solution with Sophos

CHRIST University, a multi‑campus private university in India with some 30,000 users and more than 18,000 students across five campuses, faced a distributed network of 60 servers, a BYOD environment, and a legacy firewall that couldn’t create concurrent unique user identities, enforce VLAN controls during exams, or apply consistent security policies. To address this, CHRIST evaluated and selected Sophos, deploying Sophos XG series firewalls (Sophos XG650 xHA, XG550, XG430, plus Sophos CR750iNG‑XP units) and Sophos Firewall Manager for centralized control.

Sophos implemented a centralized next‑generation firewall solution that provided a single control center, created 30,000+ user identities and Media Access Control–based rules, integrated all 60 servers across five campuses, and improved visibility and automated response to threats like ransomware and cryptomining. The Sophos XG appliances (notably XG 550 and XG 650) delivered higher performance for the large, distributed environment, resolved logging and VLAN control issues during exams, and gave CHRIST clear, measurable improvements in manageability and security.

CHRIST University

Manoj T Thomas

Manager Operations - IT Services