Yelm Community Schools is a ten-school district in Washington state. As cyber-criminal ingenuity began to outrun the district’s limited email security, the leadership and IT team knew it was time for an upgrade. They looked for a solution that would give them greater control over their emails while keeping pace with fast-evolving threats.
One product gave them everything they wanted. It had far more depth to it – and was much better value – than comparable products from other well-known vendors. Libraesva was “the best product out there” for a school district with limited resources that needs comprehensive, all-round security protection for colleagues at every level of the organization.
A school district that understands the danger of poor email security
Yelm is a city in Thurston County, Washington – about 65 miles south of Seattle. The city’s school district, Yelm Community Schools (YCS), manages six elementary and four secondary schools, as well as an administrative office and other educational facilities. With more than 650 staff and over 5,900 students, YCS could easily be a soft target for cyber criminals.
The good news is that YCS has avoided the financial and reputational damage that has befallen so many other school districts. YCS’s leadership and IT team have long known that watertight cybersecurity is key to keeping schools open and students learning. But cybercrime is constantly evolving.
By early 2025, the IT team could see that the tools they were using were no longer equal to the challenge. It was time to upgrade to a more rigorous product.
“Libraesva lets you do a progressive roll-out. You start with your baseline, then you can improve your defenses step-by-step through tighter restrictions, policies, and rules.”
Jonathan Maynard DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY
Libraesva does more than other products
Jonathan Maynard, YCS’s Director of Technology, and Jacob Vaughan, a Network Administrator at YCS, scoured the market for an email security product that would keep the district safe. One name stood out.
“We looked at multiple vendors,” says Jacob, “and saw that Libraesva wasn’t just a very powerful tool, it was very market competitive. There were other, well-known companies with broadly similar traits, but not offering exactly what we wanted. Libraesva wasn’t just the best product out there, we soon realized that it could do even more for us. The processes that Libraesva employs to maintain security standards and to check and filter emails were pretty remarkable compared to other vendors.”
Easy onboarding with plenty of scope for tighter control
Both Jonathan and Jacob found onboarding and set up easy. The Libraesva team showed huge flexibility in helping YCS set up during the summer in readiness for the fall term.
“Onboarding was flawless,” says Jonathan. “We were comfortable with Libraesva very quickly. Now we’re at the stage of what else can we do to make this work even better for us?”
Libraesva is ideal for first-time users because it has layers of depth that no one needs to explore till they’re ready. Jonathan explains it this way: “Libraesva lets you do a progressive roll-out. You start with your baseline, then you can improve your defenses step-by-step through tighter restrictions, policies, and rules.”
“Onboarding was flawless,” says Jonathan. “We were comfortable with Libraesva very quickly. Now we’re at the stage of what else can we do to make this work even better for us?”
Jonathan Maynard DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY
Safer schools, minimal management time
Jacob likes the way YCS’s email oversight has improved: “We went from being more reactive and less proactive to more proactive because Libraesva shows what’s happening in real time. It’s like having a doorman at your nightclub who screens guests before they enter. In the past, that door was partially open: we had to let guests in just to see who they were.” Despite the wealth of information, Libraesva is light on management time. On an average day, the IT team reviews the dashboard and event logs three times. Each session takes around five to ten minutes, so they rarely spend more than 20 to 30 minutes in total.
Managing and controlling what’s important to the school district
Control over a seemingly uncontrollable threat landscape is what delights Jonathan most: “With Libraesva, we can see at a glance that everything looks healthy. And we can get to the root of any issue in minutes.”
Jacob is especially pleased with the whaling list: “A whaling list is vitally important for protecting admins and managers with access to restricted or sensitive actions. Other products don’t have this, but Libraesva does, which is awesome. It lets us create email rules to counter those whaling attacks.”
In YCS’s safer and more secure environment, email security is much better defined and simpler to manage. And Jonathan has a clear managerial overview of email activity: “The visibility of what’s coming into our network and what’s being done with emails is super impressive – amazing even. We’re getting fewer complaints from end-users about spam. The reduction in chatter alone tells me that Libraesva is working.”
