Case Study: Tuscaloosa County School System achieves CIPA‑compliant, zero‑trust cybersecurity and redundant backups with Barracuda Networks

Alabama school district solves security with Barracuda

Tuscaloosa County School System, which serves 36 schools, more than 19,000 students and 2,400 staff, faced a broad distributed-security challenge: maintain CIPA web‑filtering compliance, move from VPN to zero‑trust remote access, secure Microsoft 365 email, implement a multi‑redundant backup strategy to meet state funding rules, centrally manage firewalls across many locations, and protect web applications.

TCSS deployed a suite of Barracuda solutions — Email Protection, Backup, SecureEdge, CloudGen Firewall, CloudGen Access and Application Protection — to address those needs. The result was effective, reliable M365 email defense with fast incident response and phishing protection, centralized firewall management and zero‑trust access, strong web filtering to simplify CIPA compliance, and a 3‑2‑1 backup strategy with offsite/cloud replication that delivered resilience and easier, system‑wide incident remediation.

Tuscaloosa County School System

Brad Jessen

Director of Information Technology