Case Study: California Department of Fish and Wildlife achieves centralized IT management across 115 sites with Cisco Meraki

Simplifying IT across 115 sites through centralized management and full stack solution

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, responsible for protecting the state’s natural resources, faced the challenge of supporting reliable, secure network access and device visibility across 115 widely distributed sites with a small IT team. To meet needs for centralized management, scalability, and remote troubleshooting, the department selected Cisco Meraki’s full‑stack solution (Mobility Device Management, Security & SD‑WAN, Switching, and Wireless LAN).

Cisco Meraki deployed MR access points, MS switches and MX security appliances (MX400 at HQ with MX60/80/90 at branches), plus Systems Manager MDM and a cloud dashboard to manage site‑to‑site VPNs, device inventory, and admin roles centrally. The rollout across 115 sites delivered segmented corporate access via 802.1X/RADIUS, a password‑protected guest network with Layer‑3 firewall rules, resilient remote operations during core outages, and improved device visibility and troubleshooting — with plans to extend MS switching and 802.1X to further tighten access control.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife

Erik Davis

Network Projects Consultant