Case Study: State of North Dakota modernizes its SOC with Cortex XDR from Palo Alto Networks

State of North Dakota reduces open alerts 99.6% with Cortex XDR

The State of North Dakota Information Technology (NDIT) faced challenges scaling its security operations to protect 250,000 endpoints across 600+ state entities with a fixed staff. With siloed tools, overwhelming alerts, and a lack of visibility, NDIT needed a unified platform from vendor Palo Alto Networks to centralize security, reduce costs, and prevent analyst burnout.

Palo Alto Networks implemented its Cortex platform, including Cortex XDR, Cortex XSOAR, and Unit 42 Managed Threat Hunting. This solution reduced open alerts by 99.6%, automated 60% of incident resolutions, and slashed the time to find true positives from weeks to minutes. The vendor's technology provided significant cost savings, improved analyst job satisfaction, and enabled the creation of a multi-state threat intelligence sharing initiative.

State of North Dakota