Case Study: RWTH Aachen University achieves high-performance, always-on network security with Forcepoint NGFW

RWTH Aachen University - Customer Case Study

RWTH Aachen University, one of Europe’s leading technical universities with about 7,500 staff and 43,000 students, faced the challenge of protecting a heterogeneous, research‑heavy network from increasing targeted attacks while sustaining high performance and availability. The university required a solution that could support variable user roles and seamless connections to multiple research networks and handle more than 20 Gbps of data without introducing service interruptions.

RWTH renewed Forcepoint NGFW licenses for its ROI and scalability and deployed seven interlinked firewall clusters that automatically distribute traffic to maintain performance and uptime. The clustered design lets individual firewalls be taken offline for maintenance while others carry the load, eliminating maintenance windows and enabling quarterly updates without external support; roughly one in 500 inspected packets is flagged as malware. The result is a scalable, high‑availability security posture that RWTH has relied on since 2013 and that positions the university to meet evolving threats.

RWTH Aachen University

Andreas Schreibe

Chief Business Development Officer