Case Study: Michigan Municipal Utility Agency achieves NERC CIP‑compliant, simplified OT network security with Fortinet

A Municipal Utility Agency Lights the Way toward Efficient and Effective OT Network Security with Fortinet

A Michigan municipal utility serving roughly 100,000 electric and 58,000 water customers faced a fragile, hard-to-manage OT environment built up over years with a flat topology and multiple legacy firewalls. The small OT team needed a more secure, auditable network that kept operational systems isolated from IT, complied with NERC CIP, and reduced reliance on hard‑to‑find specialist skills.

Working with Trace3, the agency built a Fortinet‑centric OT architecture—FortiGate NGFWs and FortiSwitches, FortiClient VPN, FortiAuthenticator/FortiToken MFA, and FortiManager/FortiAnalyzer for unified visibility—segmented to the enhanced Purdue model and protected by automated FortiGuard services. The result: tighter access controls, faster threat detection and response, simplified management from a single pane of glass, a successful NERC CIP audit, reduced staffing complexity, strong reliability with no outages since rollout, and a total build cost roughly equal to the former annual support contract.