Case Study: Smith County Emergency Services District 2 achieves a reliable, district‑wide, prioritized emergency network with Barracuda Networks' CloudGen Firewall

To save lives and property, Smith County ESD2 needed a modern network. With Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, they made it happen

Smith County Emergency Services District 2 is a first-responder agency in northeastern Texas with 22 fire stations serving about 200,000 residents across 749 square miles. The district faced a fragmented, ad-hoc IT environment—some stations still on dial-up or unreliable satellite and hotspot links—no centralized management, and no way to prioritize mission‑critical traffic, which hindered coordination and response.

The district deployed 27 Barracuda CloudGen Firewalls and Barracuda Cloud Control, quickly cloning configurations for fast rollout and enabling secure VPNs, traffic intelligence, and QoS. The result was a fully connected, centrally managed network with prioritized critical communications, better visibility into usage, and responsive vendor support—allowing routine internet use without jeopardizing emergency operations.

Smith County Emergency Services District 2

Larry O. Locke

Director of IT