Hillsborough Community College

As a result of a campus-wide “bring-your-own-device” (BYOD) policy, Hillsborough Community College (HCC) experienced a massive increase in network traffic and a surging demand for wireless access points—leading to a corresponding expansion in its network’s attack surface. The college also had a growing footprint in Azure, and recognized that it was responsible for protecting both its Office 365 data and applications residing in the cloud. In addition, HCC needed to rationalize its expenditures for wide area networking (WAN) connectivity, while ensuring differing quality-of-service (QoS) levels for different applications.

Replacing legacy firewalls that could not protect the endpoints or provide seamless visibility to security events, HCC opted for FortiGate next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) at its network edges, in its data center, and in the Azure cloud. It also leveraged FortiAuthenticator to keep students and staff in separate wireless domains. Meanwhile, FortiGate Secure SD-WAN is ramping up to add WAN resiliency, reduce WAN costs, and enable differential QoS management. Other components of the Fortinet Security Fabric, together with Fortinet support and services, are enabling HCC’s lean IT staff to close security gaps throughout the distributed network, while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

Learn how HCC worked with Fortinet to design and deploy a seamless Security Fabric that addressed the college’s operational and security needs in this case study