Case Study: Washwood Heath Multi Academy Trust achieves centralized, secure IT across seven schools with Sophos

Sophos the backbone of IT infrastructure at Washwood Heath Multi Academy Trust

Washwood Heath Multi Academy Trust (WHMAT) is a group of seven schools in East Birmingham serving 4,500 students and 700 staff across seven sites. Faced with different IT systems and security solutions at each school, the Trust needed a unified web-filtering, firewall and internet connectivity solution to secure roughly 2,000 endpoints and align services. WHMAT selected Sophos (with Wave 9 providing managed services) and adopted Sophos XG Firewalls, Sophos Central and Sophos Endpoint Protection in 2019.

Sophos deployed XG Firewalls at all seven sites, tied together with site-to-site VPNs and managed centrally via Sophos Central, while endpoint protection was rolled out across the estate (protecting ~2,000 endpoints and enabling rapid deployment to over 1,300 new devices during the pandemic). The implementation, coordinated by Wave 9, delivered a central Active Directory, unified web filtering (whitelists/blacklists), real-time alerts, time and cost savings, remote VPN access for staff and improved cross-site resource access—making Sophos the backbone of WHMAT’s IT infrastructure.

Washwood Heath Multi Academy Trust

James Wigley

Director of ICT and Communications