Target The Education Market For Security Revenues

The education market is desperate for help complying with CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act of 1999) filtering and reporting requirements. These schools need to report on how they are meeting security requirements for Internet filtering, phishing threats, spyware, and public proxies. VARs can increase their revenues by helping these schools meet these security needs. For PC Hotline, Inc., this is a core part of their business, and they've seen revenues increase by over 20% annually.

In a large school district, it's not unusual to have between 10,000 and 40,000 computers; yet, the district's IT department is woefully understaffed. "If you had a business with 10,000 to 40,000 computers, it would be a Fortune 100 company with an extensive and sophisticated IT department," says Ken Plunk, president of PC Hotline. "With school districts, they may have 10 to 15 people to manage those smaller networks." PC Hotline was recently awarded the project to install a security and Web filtering solution for a large public school in the Kansas City, MO metro area. A previous client referred the school to PC Hotline. The school district's IT director had recently left, and the new director needed a better Web filtering solution. The school was using an open source filtering solution on a Linux server.