The Google Workspace Blind Spot Every K-12 IT Team Misses
How DeForest School District Gained Visibility into Google Workspace and Transformed Their Security Workflow with Cloud Monitor
When you’re responsible for keeping an entire school district’s technology running, “good enough” tools quickly become
The Google Workspace Blind Spot Every K-12 IT Team Misses
How DeForest School District Gained Visibility into Google Workspace and Transformed Their Security Workflow with Cloud Monitor
When you’re responsible for keeping an entire school district’s technology running, “good enough” tools quickly become a problem. For Shelly Broberg, Network and Systems Administrator at DeForest School District in Wisconsin, serving about 4,300 students and 650 staff, that reality is front and center every day.
Like many K-12 districts, DeForest relies heavily on Google Workspace, with some Microsoft 365 in a hybrid setup. But even with firewalls, filters, and endpoint protection in place, Shelly knew something was missing.
“Google Workspace is such a beast,” she explains. “Even when you know what you’re doing, it’s still hard to effectively track things down. Especially when you’re trying to investigate something.”
“Google has the data, but it’s incredibly hard to get to using the Investigation Tool. Investigations were slow and frustrating. With Cloud Monitor, everything is there. It’s faster, easier, and actually usable. Investigations that used to take hours now take minutes, and are often mostly automated.”
— Shelly Broberg, Network and Systems Administrator, DeForest School District
After discovering ManagedMethods through a conference session and peer recommendations, Shelly and her team decided to run the free audit for K-12 schools to see Cloud Monitor in action firsthand.
What she expected to be a helpful security tool quickly became something much more impactful. “At first, I thought it would just help protect our network,” she says. “But now I see it as an operational and student safety tool, too. It does so much more than I first realized.”
Challenges
Before ManagedMethods, DeForest School District’s approach to monitoring activity in Google Workspace was largely reactive. When concerns arose, investigations relied on manual searches using the Admin console’s Investigation Tool, which were slow, incomplete, and frustrating.
“Before Cloud Monitor, we had no real visibility into what students were actually storing and sharing in Google Drive. We could see browser searches, but not what was happening in Google. It was a huge blind spot, and Cloud Monitor completely changed that.”
— Shelly Broberg, Network and Systems Administrator, DeForest School District
“If someone flagged an issue, I had to go in and run individual searches,” Shelly says. “And those searches were usually limited in what they could show me.”
Shelly experienced the same frustration that many other K-12 techs have described: you know that the data is in there somewhere, but it’s difficult to find, and the reporting is fragmented. “You can find some of this information in Google,” she shares, “but it’s so difficult to get to that it’s not practical when you’re trying to move quickly.”
That lack of visibility created a major gap. While the district had strong perimeter defenses, there was little insight into what was actually happening inside Google Drive, Gmail, and shared files. And that’s where students were getting creative.
During their free audit, Shelly and her team uncovered a Google Doc containing more than 7,000 links to proxies, games, and streaming sites designed to bypass the district’s web filter. One student had compiled a six-page list of “Rammerhead” URLs—tools specifically designed to evade the district’s web filters, firewalls, and web-monitoring detection. They also found students actively using VPNs despite multiple layers of blocking.
Looking back, the most concerning part wasn’t just what students were doing. It was how easily it could have gone unnoticed.
“We didn’t really know what students had in their Google Drives,” Shelly says. “We could see what they were searching for in the browser, but not what they were storing and sharing in Drive. That was a huge blind spot.”
Results
With Cloud Monitor, that blind spot became visible almost immediately.
“We were already blocking VPNs and proxies, but students always find a way around it. Cloud Monitor helped us uncover activity like VPN and Rammerhead use and take control of what felt impossible to manage before.”
— Shelly Broberg, Network and Systems Administrator, DeForest School District
Shelly describes the platform as a real-time risk dashboard. “It’s like a visual risk assessment,” she says. “You can see what’s going on across your environment right away instead of trying to piece it together.”
Instead of jumping between systems, her team can now search across emails, files, and user activity from a single place. And actually find what they’re looking for. They also don’t have to wait until an issue is reported. Cloud Monitor automatically detects risks and alerts Shelly to policy violations that need her attention.
That visibility led to a significant discovery of an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) violation by one of their students. A search for HTML files in Google Drive ultimately led Shelly to a student who had purchased a domain and built a fully functioning gaming website, complete with hundreds of games, proxy access, and cloaking features to avoid detection.
“I started with what I found in his Drive, then followed it to his email, and eventually to the domain he bought,” she says. “There’s no way I would have found all of that without ManagedMethods.”
In another case, Cloud Monitor flagged images as inappropriate. The high risk level detected through the platform was serious enough that Shelly had to involve school administrators and follow proper review protocols. “The image risks were an area that I didn’t typically spend a lot of time with before, but these ended up definitely not being appropriate, and measures needed to be taken. So, we were grateful the platform caught that.”
“You have to look beyond your perimeter. If you can’t see what’s happening inside your Google Workspace environment, you’re missing a big part of the picture. Cloud Monitor is the product I didn’t know I needed. Once you start using it, you realize how much you were missing.”
— Shelly Broberg, Network and Systems Administrator, DeForest School District
Beyond high-profile incidents, the day-to-day impact has been just as meaningful.
“Things that used to take hours now take minutes. And in some cases, we couldn’t even do them before.” Shelly explains. Instead of reacting to issues after they surface, the team can proactively identify risks like data loss, unauthorized logins, VPN usage, and concerning behavior patterns.
It’s also made collaboration easier. Shelly can now grant administrators and staff limited access to investigate specific students or risks without granting full Google Admin permissions. For a small IT team, those efficiencies add up quickly.
“We don’t have time to dig through multiple systems for every issue,” Shelly says. “Cloud Monitor gives us one place to go, and it turns what used to be hours of work into something we can handle in minutes.”
Today, Cloud Monitor is a core part of DeForest School District’s technology stack.
“It’s the product I didn’t know I needed. Once you start using it, you realize how much you were missing,” Shelly says. “You have to look beyond the perimeter. If you can’t see what’s happening inside your Google Workspace environment, you’re missing a big part of the picture. Cloud Monitor changed that for us completely.”
Want to learn more about improving your district’s cybersecurity, student safety, and classroom engagement?
Get started with your free Google Workspace and/or Microsoft 365 security and safety audit today.
The post The Google Workspace Blind Spot Every K-12 IT Team Misses appeared first on ManagedMethods Cybersecurity, Safety & Compliance for K-12.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from ManagedMethods Cybersecurity, Safety & Compliance for K-12 authored by Katie Fritchen. Read the original post at: https://managedmethods.com/blog/customer-story-k12-deforest-school-district-wi/
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