Back 
Sometimes in the comms team here at Netskope I hear fantastic tales that are not yet approved for public consumption. The frustration is very real when I hear of a creative customer implementation that cannot yet be told to the wider world. But today I have contrived a clever way to be able to share one of these stories with a veil of anonymity, ahead of a bigger effort to craft a case study for full public consumption. OK, “clever” may be over-egging it somewhat—I have pinned down a couple of the Systems Engineers involved in this implementation and interviewed them. I have then redacted, with all the flourish of a spy agency, to protect the customer’s name until we are all ready to talk about it properly. So here goes, my interview with “Dia” and “Yuri”*.
(*Names not actually changed, but it makes it sound exciting)
Emily: Can you start by telling me something about the customer, so we can understand their organisation—without naming names?
Dia: Sure. This customer is a French public sector organisation. Among other things, they are responsible for the Department’s education facilities. A Department is the French equivalent of a county in the UK or US. This particular Department is responsible for about 60,000 “college” students, which means children aged between 11 and 15.
Emily: I’m already interested! Can you explain a little bit about the challenge they were grappling with? The one that ultimately led them to Netskope?
Dia: Like many education authorities around the world, this Department made the decision to equip all college students with iPads. The motivation was admirable—they knew that digital technologies held huge potential for facilitating learning and connecting to digital education tools—but such a move brought with it a number of complications. In France, minors are protected by some very stringent laws that require schools and education authorities to block access to violent, racist, or adult content. The law is not frivolous, every college director and their education authority is liable and failure to protect students properly can result in fines as well as jail time.
Emily: That sounds serious. Wouldn’t it be easier to scrap the plan with the iPads?
Dia: And walk away from the benefits? This was a big initiative, driven by senior politicians and commanding a huge investment. For the IT team to say no wasn’t really an option. They had to find a way to make it work.
Emily: OK, so what exactly needed doing?
Dia: Well the first thing was to enable compliance with the requirement to block a very long list of websites. This list is central to the law, and is maintained by the University of Toulouse. For Netskope this meant