Preventing incidents by relying solely on good faith is difficult. Consider introducing tools to prevent information from being taken out.

Broadmedia has been involved in a variety of content businesses since its establishment in 1996. As a group, the company has six segments: "Education," "Media Content," "Studio/Production," "Broadcasting," "Technology," and "Other," and has two core business areas: "Education," which includes online correspondence high schools, Japanese language education, and programming education, and "Technology," which includes distribution (CDN) and security measures.

Of these, the correspondence high school business in the "Education" category operates three schools in the group, "Renaissance High School," "Renaissance Toyota High School," and "Renaissance Osaka High School," as wide-area correspondence and credit-based high schools that utilize the internet and digital teaching materials, and 12 campuses in educational special zones certified by the Cabinet Office. Regarding its features, Takashi Sakurai, section chief of the Systems Section of the Educational Services Headquarters Academic Affairs Department, explains, "In addition to the e-sports course, which was the first in Japan to be offered at a high school, we offer a wide variety of courses, from entertainment and beauty courses to double school courses specialized in studying abroad and for university entrance exams."

In recent years, security incidents have become a problem in the education sector as well. In particular, the recent information leak incident via social media by a former instructor at a major prep school caused a great stir as it was caused by an insider, and the operating company was called into question for inadequate management systems.
"Because we handle students' personal information in running the school, this incident is not something that can be ignored by the Company. So, we decided to consider how to respond under top-down instructions. The Renaissance High School Group's schools are located far from each other, and students study through e-learning, which is managed using a dedicated web application. Given that this web application handles students' personal information, grades, and other information, we felt that security measures for the web browser were necessary." (Mr. Sakurai)

The company has long implemented measures such as multi-layered defense to protect against external attacks, but in terms of internal fraud, although the company had restrictions in place through security policies, system-wide measures were insufficient, and the company was not adequately prepared to prevent malicious data being taken out.
"We had installed a log collection tool on PCs used for work, but that was only a post-incident measure and could not prevent data from being taken out in the first place. We felt that we could no longer rely on people being good, so we decided to consider installing a tool to prevent data from being taken out," says Sakurai.

Adopted "Island" which has a full range of internal fraud prevention functions. Easy to install and user experience remains the same.

While Sakurai and his team were gathering information on various tools, staff from the company's information systems department attended the Information Security Management Forum 2023 Winter at the end of 2023. They learned about the enterprise browser "Island" during a presentation by Macnica there.
"The staff knew that we were looking for security measures for web browsers, so they told us a lot about Island. At the time, we were also considering a SASE solution, but we decided that Island was more functional and easier to implement," says Sakurai.

Island is equipped with the functions necessary to prevent internal fraud, including file upload/download control, which was a requirement of the company, as well as data masking, access control, and checking all browser operations. Furthermore, Sakurai praised the system for its ease of use, which does not cause users any discomfort.
"Island is based on the open source Chromium, which is used in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Since Google Chrome was originally the Company 's standard browser, we thought that anyone would be able to use it easily. In fact, no special training was needed for the introduction, and the IDs, passwords, and bookmarks were transferred smoothly, and there were no problems with response," said Sakurai.

The company conducted a PoC in October 2024. It reported the results to the compliance committee and received approval, and then officially decided to adopt "Island" in November.

Advanced security measures are realized in web browsers. Extensive functionality eliminates the need for additional measures.

The introduction of Island went smoothly because it was a transition from a testing environment. In addition, since the subtle differences in operability were made known to users through testing, there was no major confusion among users. However, some users complained that applying masking uniformly caused problems with editing on the web, so this was addressed by granting two different permissions: viewing and editing.
"Another exception is the downloading of files during schooling (classes at actual schools at correspondence high schools). The Renaissance High School building in Daigo Town, Ibaraki Prefecture, is located in a mountainous area and is somewhat far from the nearest major station. For this reason, classes are mainly held in a camp format, but we make an exception to allow this because we need to obtain students' personal information from the management tool when reserving accommodation."

At Broadmedia, Island is used by teachers, office staff, and administrators in the educational services department, as well as counselors who handle admissions consultations, etc. When it was first introduced, there were 150 users, but as the number of personnel increased, the number has expanded to 260 (as of the end of February 2025).
"We are reducing the number of students per teacher, which is why the number of teachers is increasing. Furthermore, if the number of students increases in the future and new courses are opened, we expect to expand even further," says Sakurai.

Although full-scale implementation is yet to come, Sakurai highly praised the fact that this implementation has provided advanced security measures for web browsers.
"For example, event log monitoring can also capture screenshots, so you can clearly see what screens a user was viewing at a given point in time. For specific actions, by checking the screenshots you can see where and what the user clicked, which is clear at a glance compared to searching through a long list with existing log collection tools."

Another big factor is that the web browsers themselves have many built-in security measures, such as browser isolation, protection from phishing scams, web filtering, malicious code execution, adware removal, and virus protection.
"The standard features are sufficient, so there is no need to implement additional measures, and no extra costs are incurred. Also, because security measures for web browsers can be set all at once, the amount of management work has been greatly reduced."

Expanding licenses in line with the increase in staff in the education department. Also considering understanding and visualizing activity through log analysis.

Broadmedia plans to continue increasing licenses in line with the increase in staff in the education services department. In terms of operation, the company also plans to consider using the analysis of daily accumulated logs to help understand and visualize activity.
"Macnica provided us with solid support during this implementation. Their response to our inquiries was quick and accurate, which was extremely helpful. We look forward to their continued support in the future," said Sakurai.

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