Case Study: Manatee County School District achieves secure, cost-efficient network protection with Fortinet FortiGate

Florida School District Educates and Protects Students, While Maximizing Resources

Manatee County School District, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, serves over 47,500 students and 10,500 staff and has seen rapid population and technology growth—about 30,000 district computers and 90% of students connecting daily via phones or tablets. Escalating web-based resources and cyber threats outpaced the district’s legacy defenses, prompting an E-rate firewall RFP to find a more sophisticated, cost-effective security solution that would also ensure CIPA compliance.

The district selected Maxis360’s Fortinet FortiGate 3700D, deployed as a high-availability pair at the central data center. Implementation was fast (AD integration in ~45 minutes) and consolidated multiple systems: five content-filtering servers were replaced by a single FortiGate, load-balancing devices dropped from 11 to 4, and two core switches were retired. The result: stronger threat protection, simplified management and reporting, lower operational costs, and the ability to support continued growth without major new investment.

Manatee County School District

Steven Wright

Communications and Technical Systems Manager