Athens Independent School District
Pioneering Texas School District Improves Its Cybersecurity Posture with the Fortinet Security Fabric
Overview
Athens Independent School District (Athens ISD) has a knack for proving that less is more: In 2019, it pioneered a four-day instructional week, which has boosted both test scores and staff morale. Now, the district has taken the same approach to its network and security architecture by consolidating on the Fortinet Security Fabric.
By replacing their multivendor technology stack with the unified and integrated Security Fabric, the district’s two-person IT team can monitor and protect the five-campus network, without leaving their office. Cyberthreats are automatically detected and mitigated at the source before they can spread. And glitches that previously caused prolonged network outages are now resolved behind the scenes, while users go on working.
“Moving to the Fortinet Security Fabric solutions is the best thing we have ever done to protect our district. This is the best security solution for my district.”
– Tony Brooks, Director of Technology, Athens Independent School District
Business Impact
Eliminate network outages with transparent firewall failover
Fully reliable phone system vs. previous multiple-hours-long outages twice a week
Time savings for IT team to focus on strategic activities vs. going from site to site managing networking and security
Related Stories
Our experience with the FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls [NGFWs] has been great, and we were impressed by the level of integration enabled by the broader Fortinet Security Fabric, as well as Fortinet’s competitive pricing. Importantly, Fortinet could also provide the level of security required to access federal government and state funding and deliver against the NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] Cybersecurity Framework.”
- Eric Scholl, Chief Security Officer, GASD
What makes Fortinet the right partner for Spring Branch ISD: The solutions are enterprise-class, they protect us from all angles—from perimeter to internal threats to email to authentication—and they provide 24×7 protection while effectively taking the human factor out of many of our processes.”
- Troy Neal, Executive Director and Technology Operations, Spring Branch ISD
I personally sleep better at night knowing that we have the Fortinet endpoint solutions in place, and the managed service is an additional safety net. We know the Fortinet team will let us know if something is going on, so that we can move quickly to address it.”
- Joe Kuehl, District Technology Manager, Millard Public Schools
