Link Academy Trust – Netsweeper Case Study

The Link Academy Trust is a multi-academy trust made up of nine primary schools in Devon, England. Link Academy Trust was having issues related to cost and flexibility with their current solution. They realized that the costs were high for a safeguarding solution that had limited features. Along with costs, the solution was not as scalable as it needed to be.

The Challenge

Specific problems that Link Academy Trust faced was a lack of granularity when it came to policy management and a lack of delegated control to designated safeguarding leads (e.g. head teachers had to pull reports and manage policies). Their existing solution was also missing ‘Prevent Report’ features and real-time categorization was not there for all categories.

How Netsweeper Helped

Link Academy Trust conducted thorough research to find the right safeguarding product that would replace their current solution. They considered solutions that were device-based, cloud-based, and on-premise. In the end, Link Academy Trust found Netsweeper as the best fit for their safeguarding requirements. Saving money is critical for schools, and Netsweeper provided 40% in savings in just year one. One of the important benefits Netsweeper provided was its scalable platform. The platform was able to grow and adapt quickly as new schools were added to the Academy Trust.

Other requirements Link Academy Trust was searching for that were found in Netsweeper’s solution:

• Cloud based transparent filtering
• Centralized management for all schools
• BYOD
• SafeSearch functionality for YouTube and search engines
• Multi-tenancy

“We did a lot of market research when it came to our filtering options for the schools and we decided that Netsweeper gave us exactly what we needed. Customer experience has been great from day one.”
Matt Matthew from Link Academy Trust.