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11 Year-Old Takes Over as School's Network Admin

by Terrence O'Brien on March 31, 2008 at 02:03 PM

11 Year Old Becomes School's Network Admin
Jon Penn is a freak of nature, and we mean that in the nicest way possible. At 11-years-old, Penn has become his school's network administrator, taking over the job from the previous admin who left suddenly last year. One could call into question the qualifications of Penn's predecessor, however, considering the major clean-up job the adolescent wonder has on his hands.

The school -- the Victory Baptist School in Sherwood, Arkansas -- has 60 computers that are aging terribly, since they were donated years ago and loaded with Windows 98. When Penn jumped in, he also discovered that the 60 PCs were loaded with spyware and viruses. There was no anti-virus software installed, no firewall, no gateway, all of which are important to protect the network and the PCs. In short, the whole thing was a mess.

Since taking over, Penn has pressed the school into getting the McAfee Secure Internet Gateway Appliance to protect the network and filter out spam and viruses. He has also started planning for an upgrade to Windows 2000 which will allow Penn to manage the network as a whole. Currently, all changes or installs must be done to each PC individually.

Jon hopes to obtain his A+ Certification, a computer-technician certification, this summer.

From Network World

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Tags: administration, breaking+news, network, prodigy, top

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